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REASONS FOR FAITH 



IN 



THIS NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



BY 

john Mcdowell leavitt, d.d. 

President of St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. 




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NEW YORK: 
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

12 Astor Place. 
1884. 



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Copyright, 

John Mcdowell leavitt, 



The Library 

of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



DURING the last nine years, as President of a Col- 
lege, the writer has held a Lectureship of Psy- 
chology and Christian Evidences for the instruction of a 
Senior Class. From an extensive annual course he has 
selected this small volume. Without enfeebling the argu- 
ment he has sought to transfer it from the confined air 
of the recitation-room to the wider auditory of the Great 
Public. 

St. John's College, | 
January ist t 1884. J 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE. PAGE. 

I. The Divine Unity I 

II. Personality of God 14 

III. Mosaic Cosmical Record 32 

IV. Incidental Proofs of Scripture 46 

V. Adaptation of Christianity 64 

VI. Authenticity and Genuineness of the Old Testament 77 

VII. Authenticity of the Evangelical Histories 90 

VIII. Supernatural Evidence. .... 106 

IX. Presumptions Favorable to Jesus Christ 120 

X. Proofs of the Resurrection 131 

XI. Narratives of the Resurrection 145 

XII. Consequences of the Resurrection 161 



LECTURE I 

THE DIVINE UNITY. 

THE first verse of the Bible declares God to be the 
Creator of the universe. On this foundation is 
erected a system of religion claiming the Almighty as its 
Author.. Differing from Atheism, which denies to the 
universe a God ; from Pantheism, which confounds the 
universe with God; from Polytheism, which ascribes the 
universe to many gods, from the beginning to the end, as 
the cause of all things, the Scriptures affirm a Being eter- 
nal in His existence, infinite in His nature, supreme in His 
perfections, conscious in His personality, and the ever- 
lasting Governor of His creation. This doctrine per- 
vades and binds into harmony the system of the Bible. 
But all the divine attributes imply the Divine U f nity, to 
which the Hebrew people and the Hebrew writings bore 
peculiar and perpetual testimony. And modern science is 
pointing in the same direction. By establishing the 
unity of the creation she leads to the unity of the 
Creator. 

Permit me then to show on this subject the wonderful 
harmony between Science and Scripture. 

I remark: 

I. THE SAMENESS OF ITS MATERIALS PROVES THE UNITY 
OF THE UNIVERSE. 

Early in this century Wollaston observed dark lines in 
the solar spectrum. How simple such a fact ! Yet 
most stupendous the conclusions to which it has con- 



2 THE DIVINE UNITY. 

ducted ! Fraunhofer, of Munich, studied and mapped 
the lines. Sir John Herschel remarked that by volatil- 
izing substances in a flame these spectral colors might 
show their ingredients. This timely observation Kir- 
choff and Bunsen made fruitful in a method of analysis. 
By ingenious combinations of lenses and prisms numer- 
ous substances volatilized in flames disclosed to science 
their spectral lines. The same elements yielding always 
the same lines can be detected with nice and invariable 
accuracy. 

Turned to the heavens the spectroscope gives its 
most brilliant results. The spectrum from the sun ex- 
hibits hydrogen, barium, calcium, aluminum, zinc, tita- 
nium, copper, cobalt, manganese, sodium, iron, nickel, 
chromium and magnesium, while the moon and planets, 
shining by his reflected light, afford proofs of the same 
substances. Even the rays of the fixed stars have been 
analyzed, and worlds on the confines of the universe 
have been forced to yield the secrets of their consti- 
tution. Aldeberan shows spectroscopic lines corre- 
sponding to sodium, bismuth, tellurium, mercury and 
antimony. Sirius tells us that he is composed of iron, 
sodium, hydrogen and magnesium, whose flames display a 
brilliant white. In Orion an orange-tinted star exhibits 
sodium, magnesium, bismuth and calcium. The spectra 
of the nebulae of the heavens show bright lines like 
those of ignited gases. 

Thus, the elements of the most distant worlds of space 
are discovered to be identical with those on our earth. 
The spectroscope proves the universe to be composed of 
the same substances. Its lines are not only facts of 
Science but also arguments of Theology. 

A further deduction is inevitable. Elements combine 
chemically under fixed laws and conditions which have 



THE DIVINE UNITY, 3 

been ascertained, and even tabulated by science. In- 
deed, by a curious nomenclature their atomic proportions 
are exhibited to the eye. Whether the elements exist as 
gases, liquids or solids depends on pressure and temper- 
ature, but in every state they unite in their definite and 
invariable relative quantities. Moreover, chemical affini- 
ties are connected with electricity, which probably con- 
trols all the subtle and infinite combinations of the ma- 
terial universe. Similar molecules in the earth and in 
the stars obey similar laws. The chemistry of our globe 
applies to all the worlds of space. In our earth, in the 
moon, in the planets, in the sun, in the most distant sys- 
tems of creation, the elements are the same, electricity 
is the same, chemical affinities are the same. The vast 
and varied processes of the universe are carried forward 
by the same substances and according to the same laws. 

Now, the architecture of a country is known from the 
materials of its structures. Only the clay and bitumen 
of Shinar could have built the walls, palaces and temples 
of Babylon. The tower of Belus lifted to the stars 
bricks of the Mesopotamian plains. In the white marbles 
of the statues and edifices of Athens were expressed, 
not only the genius but the nationality of the artist. The 
delicate stone of modern Paris from the quarries of 
Chantilly has a color peculiar to France. Over the 
world you may distinguish a country by the material of 
its buildings. And thus with the creation. It is proved 
one in plan by the identity of the substances employed 
in its architecture. 

II. THE SAMENESS OF LIGHT PROVES THE UNITY OF 
THE UNIVERSE. 

Place sodium in the flame of your spectroscope ! You 
detect the characteristic lines ! Turn your instrument 
to Aldeberan ! You perceive the same peculiar lines. 



4 THE DIVINE UNITY. 

Light has been refracted with the same results, and 
shown to be the same in the lamp and in the star. Ex- 
amine a dew-drop with your microscope ! In that globe 
glittering on a leaf of your rose-bush you see disclosed 
millions of minute monsters ! Point your telescope to 
Sirius ! You pass from the small to the great, from the 
insignificant to the magnificent, from a leaf on your 
lawn to the limit of the universe ! Yet the light-beam, 
in its reflections and refractions, here, there, everywhere, 
is governed by the same laws. The glow-worm and the 
moon, the rain-drop and the planet, the gas-jet in your 
parlor and the star whose rays for ages have been trav- 
elling to your eye exhibit one universal mode of action. 
Thus the light which makes earth daily visible, and 
sparkles nightly in the heavens, demonstrates the unity 
of nature through her illimitable dominions. 

But the argument is intensified if we accept the modern 
undulatory theory. Newton supposed that luminous 
bodies flash forth particles of their substance, which, en- 
tering the eye, give perceptions of objects. Now it is be- 
lieved that, as the air encircling the earth by waves im- 
pinging the ear produces sound, so a luminiferous ether 
pervading the universe by waves impinging the eye pro- 
duces sight. Differences of color are caused by differences 
of vibrations. As the intensity of sound increases with 
the amplitude of the undulations of the air, thus the in- 
tensity of sight increases with the amplitude of the undu- 
lations of the ether. A body appears white when it reflects 
all the vibrations; black, when it reflects none of the 
vibrations; and red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo 
or violet in the solar spectrum in the proportion of its 
reflected vibrations. Science even tabulates in the bil- 
lionths of an inch the wave-lengths of the luminiferous 
ether. According to this theory we have the universe 



THE DIVINE UNITY. 5 

clothed with a marvellous mantle, itself invisible, yet pen- 
etrating all, enfolding all, displaying all — at the centre 
and at the circumference of nature — disclosing the same 
laws, producing the same results and revealing the ampli- 
tude of the creation according to the same plan through 
the circuit of its infinity. 

III. THE SAMENESS OF GRAVITATION PROVES THE UNITY 
OF THE UNIVERSE. 

The ancients were continually seeking for the cosmos 
a common principle, but they reached towards a mystery 
which forever baffled them. In all pertaining to form 
and expression they excelled ourselves. It was when they 
began to question nature about force and law that they 
became bewildered. What are the elements ? What is 
the earth? What is the sun? What are the stars? Of 
all, what is the origin? In attempting to answer these 
questions ancient philosophers were curious children. 
To the populace the moon was a god, the star was a god, 
the sun was a god. Our earth was sometimes considered 
as an animal and sometimes as a divinity. No wisdom of 
Chaldea, Egypt, Greece or Rome could explain the ter- 
restrial or the celestial phenomena. Thus, age after age, 
the ancients wandered on in a hopeless maze, puzzled, 
awed, confounded before the mystery of the creation, 
forever speculating and forever dissatisfied, building sys- 
tems only to destroy them; dreaming, questioning, discus- 
sing, yet unable to penetrate the darkness of the scheme 
of the universe. Nature seemed to hide herself in an eter- 
nal gloom. Was she not contrived to baffle her inquirers ? 
Men saw the sun and moon and stars revolving about the 
earth, and, believing their senses, were deceived. It is not 
strange that the multitude parcelled earth and sky into 
innumerable dominions and assigned them to their count- 
less deities, when the philosophers during centuries 



6 THE DIVINE UNITY. 

watched and mapped the heavens without being able to 
explain a single celestial movement. Only within three 
hundred years has the veil been lifted. Pythagoras had a 
glimmer of the truth, with no possible means of establish- 
ing it. Even Copernicus, who suggested the true system, 
did not produce convincing proofs. He placed the sun 
within the orbits of each of the planets but not at the 
centres, and thus while the distributor of light he had no 
influence on motion. Assisted by the tables of Tycho 
Brahe the illustrious Kepler at last attained the truth. 
Yet, misled by the old fancy that celestial motions must 
be in circles, it was by inspiration rather than proof he 
perceived that the orbits of the planets must be ellipses, 
and in the focus of each, the sun. Soon he was led to his 
wonderful laws of the celestial revolutions. One thing 
remained. What causes these motions of satellites about 
their primaries and of planets about the sun? Whence 
these stupendous circlings of worlds ? Where does the 
power reside? Is it without? Is it within ? Is it a 
familiar force? Is it an undiscovered energy? It was 
the glory of Newton to answer these questions and estab- 
lish forever the unity of the creation. He showed that 
visible about us every moment are the effects of that 
power impelling the unnumbered globes of our immeas- 
urable universe. Men had always seen it and never 
known it. The infant dashing his toy to the floor gave 
proof of its existence. The boy who hurled his ball 
circling through the air was a witness of its effects. The 
apple dropping from a limb felt its energy. Each insect, 
each bird, each beast, each man, each tree and twig and 
leaf, the sand-grain on the ocean shore and drop within 
the vast abyss were subjects of its sway. Not an atom 
of dust in a sunbeam, or at the centre or circumference 
of our globe, that did not obey the force controlling the 



THE DIVINE UNITY. 7 

mightiest spheres of the universe. A triumph of our 
modern science has been to show that the mystery of 
the ages was to be solved in an energy known to all men 
at every moment of their lives, and which acting thus 
visibly and familiarly on earth, yet operates in the moon, 
in the planets, in the comets, in the sun, in all the worlds 
of space at all times and in all places, binding together 
the universe in one fellowship of existence. Each atom 
is related to every other atom. Each globe is related to 
every other globe. Each system is related to every other 
system. Science thus again demonstrates for religion the 
unity of the creation. 

So far our argument has been strictly along the path of 
inductive science. We now pass into a region of specu- 
lations which are almost certainties. 

IV. THE SAMENESS IN ITS SYSTEMS PROVES THE UNITY 
OF THE UNIVERSE. 

The fixed stars are suns. Shining by reflected light their 
rays could not sparkle through immeasurable distances. 
To be visible in such brilliancy they must be vastly larger 
and brighter than our own splendid orb of light and life. 
Indeed they burn and shine during cycles, magazines of 
inexhaustible flame. In some cases we see two, three, 
even four turning round each other. Hence the conclu- 
sion that about these as central suns must move planets 
and satellites, like our own, but whose light, absorbed in 
the darkness of infinite space, is invisible even to the tele- 
scope. As we have proved unity in molecules and unity 
in masses, we thus also discover unity in systems. These 
are numerous as the sands of shores, the leaves of forests, 
the drops of clouds, the waves of oceans, and their 
worlds vastly exceed our own in size and brilliancy. Ac- 
cording to one common method we have, system after 
system, wheeling and glittering over the creation. 



8 THE DIVINE UNITY. 

V. THE SAMENESS IN ITS PROBABLE EVOLUTION INDI- 
CATES THE UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE. 

The efforts of the ancients to refer the cosmos to a 
common principle sprang from the constitution of the 
human mind, which, by a law, would resolve the many 
into the one. They erred, not in aim, but in method. 
Conclusions were deduced from insufficient premises 
which made philosophy contemptible. But by a different 
path inductive science is none the less surely leading us 
onward to the true unity. Of this the nebular hypothesis 
affords us proof. Space is peopled with worlds which, 
so far as ascertained, alike in elemental constitution, dif- 
fer widely in size, shape, density and appearance. In 
our own system, as you recede from the sun there is a 
diminution in density. Comets, which move into space 
often unestimated distances from their centre, are com- 
posed largely of thin, diffused and often transparent mat- 
ter. Also, discernible over the heavens are enormous 
nebulae ever changing in size and aspect, and which seem 
formed of incandescent gases. Our own earth, as proved 
by geology, in its physical structure and also in its vege- 
table and animal life, has been plainly developed from a 
simpler to a more complex condition, and gives many 
evidences of having passed from an original gaseous to a 
liquid, and then to its present solid state. Now the ro- 
tations of a nebulous ether about its axis would produce 
such a system as ours, with its sun, its planets, its satellites, 
its comets, having the same relations, sizes, forms, densi- 
ties and motions, and indeed account for the grand geo- 
logical and astronomical conditions of our globe. It is 
not, therefore, strange that all the worlds of the universe 
should be conceived as emerging from the revolutions of 
this pristine matter revealed in space to the telescope, 
and believed to constitute the storehouses of systems, the 



THE DIVINE UNITY. 9 

magazines of the creation, and from which, according to 
the same laws, by the same methods, and with the same 
results are shaped during cycles those innumerable spheres 
which adorn the scheme of visible nature. Nor is this 
all. What we esteem elements may be such only in our 
ignorance and our impotence. More powerful agencies 
may reduce them even to a single substance, possibly, it is 
thought, to the luminiferous ether, from whose delicate 
maternal bosom, therefore, alone the whole universe may 
have been evolved. Yet more. The force of the entire 
creation is now supposed to be a unit — one in its charac- 
ter and invariable in its sum — vanishing here to appear 
yonder, but incapable of increase or diminution. These 
are indeed speculations; yet they are prophecies of the 
future, and show the tendencies of even inductive science 
towards unity as the crown and perfection of the creation. 

VI. THE UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE IS INTIMATED BY 
ITS SEEMING REVOLUTION ABOUT SOME COMMON 
CENTRE. 

Upon this sublime speculation I will not dwell as an 
argument. It is sufficient to mention that certain celes- 
tial motions strongly show that, while all worlds are im- 
pelled by the same gravitating forces, and are grouped 
in the same fellowship of arrangements, also, all systems 
together throughout illimitable space have a motion about 
one point in the heavens, which has even been boldly 
located in a star of the constellation Hercules. 

Now the power of moving such a universe must be in- 
finite. Billions on billions of worlds wheeling and rush- 
ing cycle after cycle! In our own planet consider the 
might of oceans, earthquakes, tempests, volcanoes, and 
then the less violent but perhaps greater potencies of 
electricity, combustion, steam, and vegetable and animal 
growth! Columns of flame dart out from the sun one 



IO THE DIVINE UNITY. 

hundred thousand miles. The aggregate impelling power 
of such a creation is manifestly infinite, and commensurate 
with the force is the intelligence. We raise now no 
questions of personality These are reserved for our 
next lecture. We here only assert that modern science 
leads us to the conclusion that the proved unity of plan 
in this illimitable creation implies a corresponding unity 
in some infinite power, and infinite intelligence. 

But this precise truth is involved in Christianity. 
Thus far Science and Scripture harmonize. Induction 
prepares for Revelation, and Revelation amplifies Induc- 
tion. They are one, as dawn and day. The unity of the 
force and the intelligence in the limitless plan of nature 
is the conclusion from Science, and the unity of the 
Being who supplies the force and intelligence from His 
own infinitude is the doctrine of the Scriptures. During 
fifteen centuries hear their constant, their consistent, 
their sublime testimony! 

" The Lord our God is one Lord. For thus saith the 
Lord that created the heavens — God Himself that formed 
the earth: I am the Lord; there is none else." 

Here, however, remark that while science and Scrip- 
ture agree in the unity of the acting force in universal 
nature, they are at this very point opposed by all the 
religious systems of the world underived from Christi- 
anity. Not even a philosophic Pantheism has preserved 
its disciples from idolatry. While a few intellectual 
dreamers profess faith in an impersonal and unconscious 
Primal Substance, the multitude are framing for them- 
selves gods innumerable. First they personify, and then 
they adore the powers of nature. Sun, moon, stars, 
rivers, winds, mountains, trees, birds, fishes, beasts, rep- 
tiles, lightnings, thunders — these have been the divinities 
of men. Yet amid this universal superstition, the scorn 



THE DIVINE UNITY. II 

of Science, the Bible has stood a witness for the unity of 
the Creator. The oneness of the Deity is the glory of 
the Scripture. 

Nor was the multiplication of gods a proof of intel- 
lectual inferiority. The sublime pyramids were erected 
by loathsome idolaters. Luxor, matchless in grandeur, 
shed the glory of genius over the adoration of beasts. 
The noblest temples of Egypt enshrined or worshipped 
a cat, or ox, or monkey, or crocodile. All the splendid 
culture of the land of the Nile revolved about Polytheism. 
The tower of Belus, that loftiest wonder of the world, lifted 
its flame in honor of the Babylonian sun-god. What has 
ever exceeded the grandeur of the Parthenon, and the 
majesty of the Olympian Jupiter? The genius of Homer 
was consecrated to the deities of Greece. Those ancient 
classic nations whose literature we imitate, whose art we 
revere, whose achievements we emulate, gave their 
treasures of wealth and soul to the magnificence of mul- 
tiplied gods. 

Yet in protest against both the culture and the ignorance 
of Polytheism, the Scriptures, before the grand nations of 
antiquity, were the sole witnesses to the unity of the 
Deity. And in their doctrine of unity they are con- 
firmed by all the discoveries of Science, which has as- 
sisted Christianity in hurling from their temples both 
the classic and the popular gods. With every triumph 
of inductive research, from the earth round the circum- 
ference of the universe, we have the same ever-increasing 
testimony to a fundamental truth of the Bible. Among 
the deities of Babylon, and Egypt, and Greece, and 
Rome, and India, and China, except where genius or tra- 
dition gives a glimpse of the Hebrew Jehovah, nothing 
accords with the grandeur of such an impersonal creative 
force as our atheistic science would accept. Yet in the 



12 THE DIVINE UNITY. 

Bible all descriptions surpass even the conceptions of 
modern research. How does this happen? The Book 
of Job preceded the Iliad of Homer by more than five 
centuries. Moses wrote hundreds of years before Hesiod. 
The Psalms of David, breathing and burning with pious 
adoration to Jehovah, were older than the immortal odes 
of Pindar. Isaiah penned his prophecies, and proclaimed 
the majesty of the one God before ^schylus and 
Sophocles and Euripides consecrated their genius to the 
Grecian divinities, and made the Athenian theatre the 
pulpit of the Athenian idolatry. The Proverbs and Canti- 
cles of Solomon antedated the wit and music of Horace, 
while the predictions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel were old 
when the epic of Virgil pleased Augustus and delighted 
Rome. The majestic descriptions of the Scripture, be- 
gun in the morning of the world, before Art, before 
Literature, before Science, before Philosophy, are yet 
such as Art, and Literature, and Science, and Philosophy 
will forever admire, and can never approach. 

How does this occur? Suppose science should ad- 
vance her conclusions from an impersonal evolving force 
to a personal creating God; could she then discover an 
attribute unrevealed in the Bible? Let her reach the 
ideal of her attainment; let her carry us round the circle 
of the earth; let her explain from centre to circumference 
the laws of a universe; will she ever transcend the sub- 
limity of the sacred writers? Not if to the triumphs of 
inductive research she should add the loftiest inspirations 
of human poetry. Can she exceed eternity? Can she 
surpass omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence? Can 
she exalt herself above the wisdom, the love, the justice, 
the holiness of Jehovah as revealed in the Scripture and 
manifested in the universe? Forever above her will be 
the Infinite and the Everlasting God. As unfolded in 



THE DIVINE UNITY. 1 3 

the Hebrew oracles, the Divine Nature is beyond the 
measure of human capacity and the march of human 
progress. The descriptions of Moses, the delineations of 
David, the sublimities of Isaiah, the conceptions of St. 
Paul, above all, the simple, touching, and majestic words 
of Jesus Christ, produced, some before the dawn, others 
in the twilight of science, not only may express the 
devotions of a Bacon, a Newton, and a Herschel, but 
are worthy the worship of the most exalted intelligences 
ever depicted in the glory everlasting. 

What is the explanation? Whence this wisdom resid- 
ing alone, in the sacred writers? Against all the idola- 
tries of all the ages of all the world, why does the Bible, 
in language of such power, beauty, comprehensiveness 
and majesty, inculcate a belief in the unity of an infinite 
Power? And this testimony is being every moment estab- 
lished by every advance of science, where, had the teach- 
ing been in conformity to the other religions of mankind, 
they would have exposed Christianity to certain over- 
throw. I will not say that this fact alone is proof of the 
truth. But I will affirm that it is a potent presumption 
in favor of the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures 
as divine oracles communicated to man by God. 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



LECTURE II. 

PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

IN each of us is a characteristic something which dis- 
tinguishes from every other being in the universe. 
We must discriminate between the fact and our con- 
sciousness of the fact. After considering the former, we 
will attempt to analyze the latter. 

Each man is a purposed and peculiar part of this vast 
creation. He appears at a certain time, under certain 
circumstances, with certain endowments, and in certain 
relations, which never happened before, and which will 
never occur again. As distinguished from all others, his 
being, his history, his character are his own. From his 
conception to his birth, and onward to any point of his 
development, he has in himself indelible marks which fix 
his personality. But where does this mysterious prop- 
erty reside? In his senses? Destroy these ! He sur- 
vives. In his limbs? Amputate them ail ! He remains. 
Take away every portion of his body up to the last pos- 
sibility of life! He is still himself. Deprive him of 
memory, reason, volition. Let passion, desire, appetite, 
affection, fade or rage within him! His personality has 
not perished. You may call him lame, or deaf, or 
dumb, or halt, or blind, or idiot, or lunatic, yet, while he 
lives, he is himself, and the law will recognize his exist- 
ence and guard his rights. His personality, then, is 
not in his senses, his limbs, his estate, his reputation, or 
even in his passions, his affections, his volitions, his intel- 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. I 5 

lections. It is behind them all. What uses his senses, 
controls his limbs, directs his choice, originates his 
thoughts, and amid the wrecks of the accidents of the 
man is yet himself? Can we discover that in him which 
thinks, and feels, and wills, and moves? Then may we 
reach his personality. ' 

I look within and without; I recall my history from 
my earliest recollections; I survey the universe within 
the circle of my vision. All has changed. I am myself. 
My form has enlarged; my features are different; every 
atom of my body has been renewed; yet, amid these per- 
petual, although insensible, revolutions my personality is 
untouched. Earth, sea, air, planet, sun, moon, stars — the 
universe — has been one ceaseless transition. I have not 
perished in the eternal change. The same conscious 
person, I preserve my identity with a tenacity which is 
indestructible. 

Nor is my conviction only from recollection. It is 
deeper than memory. The events of my life seem al- 
most traced in the soul itself and wrought into its texture. 
Great facts of personal history, unlike the atmospheric 
particles which make a mere mechanical mixture, rather 
resemble the oxygen of the air which enters chemically 
into the circulation to be incorporated with every part of 
the physical system. 

Here is the phenomenon we are to explain. I am, and 
that I who am have been my conscious self I know, and 
only annihilation can destroy my conviction. Born amid 
the infantine efforts of my will to overcome the inertia 
of external matter, my personality is an ineradicable 
fact of the universe. If I exist forever, it will share my 
immortality. 

Psychology must build on this Selfhood as a founda- 
tion. Nor is she peculiar in taking for granted such a 



l6 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

fact as the basis of her structure. The whole fabric of 
mathematical science rests on definitions and axioms 
which you believe without argument, because you are so 
constituted that you cannot help believing. Nor are the 
physical sciences different. You say that they depend on 
observation and experiment. On what do observation and 
experiment depend? On the testimony of your senses. 
Reject these, and even the inductive sciences are for you 
delusive shadows. Nay; receive any possible system of 
truth, or of falsehood! Why do you believe it? Because 
your reason has been satisfied. You then in this and in 
every conclusion postulate the right constitution of your 
intellectual nature, and the stability of the order of the 
universe. Deny the reliability of your healthy faculties, 
and you abandon yourself to doubt, darkness and de- 
spair. Your existence is a misery and a failure. Science 
is impossible; philosophy is impossible; society is impos- 
sible; moral improvement is impossible. Belief in your 
personality is at the root of your being. Destroy that and 
you are lost in the vastness of the darkness of this wide, 
and wonderful, and fearful universe. 

Here coincide the conclusions of the philosopher and 
the belief of the multitude. The faith of mankind, how- 
ever blind, is not to be despised. It has always some 
element of truth. Philosophy instead of being opposed 
to common- sense is the flower of its perfection devel- 
oped by discipline and study. The man with science and 
the man without science are not so much fundamentally 
different in their opinions as in the fact that the one can 
give reasons for his principles; can discriminate and 
generalize and classify; can unfold his system in its order, 
and interpret it in its relations; while the other, however 
correct in his views, holds them crudely and confusedly, 
without ability to arrange, defend, and expound. That 



PERSONALITY OF GOD, 1 7 

Philosophy makes itself suspected as shallow and con- 
temptible which would gain reputation by sneering at 
the common-sense of mankind. 

We have thus ascertained our Personality to be an 
indubitable and indestructible fact. It reaches to the 
roots of our being. It affects all human beliefs. It 
colors our philosophy, our religion, our lives. Indeed, it 
is at the basis of all knowledge. 

Now we advance to analyze the Consciousness of our 
Personality. In such an inquiry correctness and certi- 
tude are of inestimable value. Permit me, then, first to 
show you how wide and how wild the contradictions on 
the subject. 

Locke confounds Perception and Reflection, and as- 
cribes to them the same operations now usually referred 
to Consciousness. He says, " The other fountain from 
which Experience furnisheth the understanding is the 
Perceptiofi of the operations of our minds within us." 
Almost in the same words he defines Reflection as " that 
notice the mind takes of its own operations." 

Dr. Thomas Reed, so far as he goes, is always clear, 
precise, and consistent. " Consciousness," he says, "is 
a word used by philosophers to signify that immediate 
knowledge which we have of our present thoughts and 
purposes, and in general of all the operations of our 
minds." On the contrary he invariably applies Percep- 
tion to external objects. 

According to Sir William Hamilton, " Consciousness is 
the knowledge that I, that the Ego exists in some deter- 
minate state — an act of knowledge may be expressed by 
the formula, I know; an act of Consciousness by the 
formula, I know that I know." 

Yet having thus, like Reed, confined Consciousness to 
our mental operations, he afterwards makes it identical 



15 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

with Perception where he says, " Perception, or the Con- 
sciousness of external objects, is the first power in order." 

Stranger than all, after denying that Consciousness is a 
special faculty, and calling it a general faculty, he sepa- 
rates the Presentative Faculty, by a complete reversal of 
his original definition into External Self Consciousness 
and Internal Perception. 

Dr. Mark Hopkins affirms " Consciousness to be the 
knowledge by the mind of itself as the permanent and in- 
divisible subject of its own operations." This is the 
truth, but I think, as we shall see, not the whole truth. 
In its popular sense the word " subject " is passive; in its 
philosophical meaning it may imply, yet does not ex- 
press, the two distinctive elements which characterize the 
testimony of Consciousness. 

In Mr. Herbert Spencer laxity of definition reaches its 
greatest attainable limit. His treatment of Perception 
and Consciousness is a psychological marvel. He con- 
founds them utterly. " As foregoing chapters,'' he re- 
marks, " have made sufficiently manifest, the term Per- 
ception is applied to mental states infinitely varied, and 
widely different in their nature. It will be abundantly 
manifest that the state of Consciousness which we call 
Perception is scarcely ever discontinuous with its like." 

With all the assurance of perfect knowledge Mr. 
Spencer speaks of the consciousness of a fish, and even 
of an organism. 

Yet while Mr. Spencer ascribes Consciousness to a 
gnat, Hartmann denies it to the Deity, styling his system 
the " Philosophy of the Unconscious." You see how 
appalling is this confusion. From a conscious gnat to an 
unconscious deity is a wide range of difference. 

Amid this darkness the first step towards light is a 
clear and invariable distinction between Perception and 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 1 9 

Consciousness. This arises from the nature of things 
and is a philosophical necessity. My knowledge of the 
external world differs intrinsically from my knowledge of 
the internal world. In the first the object is matter and 
in the second the object is spirit. In the first my senses 
are employed; in the second my senses are excluded. 
In the first the intelligence is involuntary, while in the 
second the intelligence is compelled. Here are psychi- 
cal acts opposite in object, opposite in method, opposite 
in result. The words denoting them should be corre- 
spondingly different, and no terms can be more significant 
and convenient than Perception and Consciousness, 
Representing the poles of our knowledge, they should 
never be confounded. Perception should always be ap- 
plied to the soul as knowing what is without, and Con- 
sciousness to the soul as knowing what is within. Other- 
wise truth is wounded and the confusion inextricable. 

Having thus prepared the way, I will define Conscious- 
ness as that Function by which the soul knows itself in its 
operations as the causative personality expressed by the pro- 
noun I. 

As Consciousness embraces all our faculties, to mark 
its high estate and distinguish it from all the other facul- 
ties I have called it not a Faculty but a Function. 

Within me is a current of thoughts, feelings, and voli- 
tions. These I can arrest, inspect, analyze. Let me be- 
gin! I am looking at a star. Its brilliancy absorbs my 
soul. Fixed in my attention I perceive only the dazzling 
object. Of the intellectual processes in the operation I 
remark nothing. But now I withdraw my attention from 
the star, and fix it on my soul. In the act of analyzing 
the operation by which I perceived the star, the operation 
itself is gliding back into the past. Nor can it be other- 
wise. At the same moment I cannot notice the object of 



20 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

my perception, and study the process of my perception. 
My soul is a unit. It cannot divide itself. It passes 
with inconceivable swiftness from perception to per- 
ceiver, and back from perceiver to perception, but in the 
operation perception and perceiver are left in the past. 
Where either is afterwards considered, it must be in 
Memory. 

Similar remarks apply to every Faculty of the Soul. 
Should I occupy myself with a recollection of Memory, 
with a picture of the Imagination, with a deduction of 
the Reason, a volition, a passion, an emotion, with any 
psychical process whatever, the attempt to analyze con- 
signs to the past the process introspected. Thus what is 
usually styled Consciousness is in truth Memory. 
Through Memory I study the psychical process I would 
explain. The soul analyzes its operations through Mem- 
ory. We have not yet approached Consciousness. This 
testifies not to the operation, but to the causative person- 
ality of the soul in the operation. 

All in me is from what is expressed by the pronoun I. 
That I is the radiating point of each act of my being. 
All thoughts, feelings, volitions come from the I surely 
as rays from the sun. If I do not know this I know 
nothing. Let my limbs move, my hands strike, my eyes 
see, my ears hear, my lips taste, my nostrils smell, my 
fingers grasp! How do I express these acts? I move! 
I strike! I see! I hear! I taste! I smell! I grasp! 
Nor is it otherwise with the Feelings. Love, hate, joy, 
grief, appetite, desire are inseparable from a personality. 
I love! I hate! I rejoice! I hunger! I thirst! I 
covet ! Similarly with the Will. I choose ! I determine! 
I resolve! Turn now to the Intellect! I remember! I 
imagine ! I reason ! In every possible act of the body 
and of the soul we express ourselves in terms of the I as 



PERSONALITY OF GOD, 21 

a personal cause. To this we are compelled by the consti- 
tution of our being. It is a universal necessity. The 
language of mankind bears perpetual testimony to this 
consciousness of personal causative agency in all that 
each member of the human family thinks, and feels, 
and wills, and does in every moment of his waking 
existence. 

This is the belief of the race. Men know that in their 
acts they are themselves. In all the I is the originating 
and governing force. It intrudes itself into the very dis- 
courses of the philosophers while attempting its annihila- 
tion. Yet the effort to extinguish his personality began 
early in the history of man. Carved into the monuments 
of the Nile, it is older than the pyramids. From Egypt it 
passed into India, into China, into Greece, into Rome, 
into the Mediaeval Church. And occidental philosophers 
are reviving the oriental dream ! Well have Hume, and 
Mill, and Hartmann known that on our definitions of 
Personality and Consciousness must be fought the last 
grand battle of Philosophy and Religion. 

To illustrate and establish my assertion I will proceed 
to examine some of the statements of these plausible and 
often fascinating writers. 

Mr. Hume defines mind " to be nothing but a heap or 
collection of different impressions united together by dif- 
ferent relations ;" and Mr. Mill says, " Mind is a series of 
feelings with a belief in the permanent possibility of the 
feelings." 

Feelings! Impressions! No thought! No choice! 
No resolve! Selfhood unrecognized! Personality elim- 
inated ! Even our feelings and impressions united by 
relations! We have already shown that our conscious 
personality gives unity to all the operations of the soul, 
and the movements of the body. 



22 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

What bears testimony even to the feelings, impres- 
sions, and relations ? Mr. Hume and Mr. Mill answer 
— Consciousness. But is this its whole testimony ? The 
witness is in court, and cannot be impeached by those 
calling, nor dismissed without cross-examination. Nor 
can Mr. Hume divide Consciousness. He must not take 
part of its testimony, and refuse the other part. If he 
accepts a part he must accept the whole. Now, does my 
Consciousness testify that my soul is but a succession of 
feelings, ideas, sensations and impressions united by re- 
lations ? Consciousness also witnesses to the I in all my 
possible movements. And if I receive the evidence of 
Consciousness to the operation, I must receive the evi- 
dence of Consciousness to the operator, and believe that 
where there is a thought there is a thinker, and where 
there is a will there is a wilier, and where there is motion 
there is a mover. I am not, then, an impalpable succes- 
sion of ideas, impressions, feelings, relations. I am a 
cause. I am an agent. I am a Person. 

And now we come to the application of our prin- 
ciples. 

Over the world, in all ages, are discoverable the traces 
of an original monotheism. Modern research enables us 
to begin our proof in Egypt. On the scroll of a papyrus 
found in a tomb is the record of a creed more ancient 
than either Pantheism, or Polytheism. " Nuk-pu nuk " 
— I am whom I am — the very words afterwards recorded 
as spoken to Moses from the flame of the bush. 

In the Assyrian Pantheon Asshur was sometimes wor- 
shipped as the one Supreme God, with all the attributes 
of intense personality. 

India, in the song of her Dravidians bears testimony 
to a faith older than the dream of Boodh. Hear the 
wonderful words: 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 2$ 

'* God the Omniscient fills all space, 

And time ; He cannot die nor end. In Him 
All things exist. There is no God but He; 
He hath no end, nor had beginning. He 
Is one, inseparate. To Him alone 
Should mortals offer praise and prayer." 

Before atheistic Confucianism, and polytheistic Tauism 
was also in China a primitive Monotheism. 

Nor does Greece refuse to witness. The words ot 
Sophocles sound like those of a Hebrew Prophet: 
"One, in very truth; God is one 
Who made the heavens and the far-stretching sea, 
The deep's blue billow, and the might of winds." 

The Roman Sibyl also gave her voice to celebrate the 
unity and the personality of the Deity: 
1 ' Know and lay up wisdom in your hearts. 

There is one God who sends rains, and winds, and earthquakes, 

Thunderbolts, famines, plagues and dismal sorrows. 

Over Heaven He rules and Earth, and truly is." 

But in every land and in every age is developed a ten- 
dency among philosophers to deny the divine person- 
ality and thus relapse into Pantheism; and among the 
multitude to deny the divine unity, and thus relapse into 
Polytheism. Uniformly the thinkers are drawn to one 
pole, and the thoughtless to the other. ' Humanity moves 
round this perpetual circle. 

Where the soul is made a mere succession of ideas, 
nature is made a mere succession of events. This is a 
universal law. If causation and personality be denied to 
man, causation and personality will be denied to God. 
Is the great end in sweeping away second causes to 
obliterate the First Cause, and thus our moral responsi- 
bility? Man, therefore, would develop from nature as 
a flower whose bloom through decay returns to the 



24 PERSONALITY OF GOD, 

maternal bosom; or he resembles the bubble which floats 
and glitters and bursts, lost forever in the vastness of the 
ocean. A necessary emanation, he thus conveniently 
has no more accountability than the unconscious bubble, 
or impersonal flower. 

In Egypt those opposites, Pantheism and Polytheism, 
existed in their most intense and exaggerated forms. 
Two centuries since, in his " Intellectual System of the 
Universe," Ralph Cudworth, Master of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, lifted the veil from the philosophic creed of 
the land of the Pharaohs. In his pages you discover 
how similar is the Pantheism of all ages. The following 
testimony preserved by Cudworth expresses the philo- 
sophic tendencies of ancient Egypt and of modern Ger- 
many: 

" For what shall I praise Thee? for those things which 
Thou hast made? Or for those things Thou hast not 
made? Thou art whatsoever I am; Thou art whatsoever 
I do, or say; for Thou art all things, and there is nothing 
which Thou art not; Thou art that which is made, and 
Thou art that which is not made — and in this universe 
there is nothing which He is not." 

Now Moses was educated in the palace of Pharaoh, 
who was at once monarch and hierarch. Priests were 
teachers of the young Hebrew. He was instructed in all 
the occult wisdom of Egypt. From his youth he was 
familiar with the philosophic Pantheism and the popular 
Polytheism. Opposed to both were the traditions of his 
race. Of the Unity and the Personality of Jehovah 
Moses, before the world, was the elected witness. To 
him more impressive than fire, or cloud, or tempest, or 
thunder were the first significant words of the Decalogue! 

"I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other 
gods but Me." 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 2$ 

Observe the pronouns. They are characteristic of the 
Bible. I! Me! These are the tokens of Personality. This 
I is the source of the Moral Law. That monosyllable dis- 
tinguishes the Creature from the Creator, and affirms the 
obligation of the creature. In a simple letter is the root 
of our personal allegiance to the personal sovereign of 
the universe. Here is the protest against Pantheism, while 
Polytheism finds its rebuke in the words, " Thou shalt 
have no other gods but Me." 

This suggests the grand peculiarity of the Scriptures. 
They testify forever against the superstition which adores 
many gods, and against the philosophy which making all 
god, makes no god at all. Sublimely do the simple per- 
sonal pronouns represent the majesty of the universe. 

As in a previous lecture we have shown that the bib- 
lical declarations of the Divine Unity are supported 
by Science, we now propose to prove that the biblical 
declarations of the Divine Personality are supported by 
Philosophy. 

The question is not how the idea of God originated. 
Whether from man himself, or from external nature, or 
from Revelation are not our present inquiries. Ours is 
not now to grope amid the traditions of the past, but to 
show in the light of Psychology that the scriptural doc- 
trine of the Personality of God is in accordance with 
philosophic truth. 

Thought excites thought. Neither words, nor marble, 
nor color stimulate the soul. These are powerless ex- 
cept as interpreters of thought. A rough stone awakens 
slight interest. Carve it into a statue! Instantly it kin- 
dles you into an intellectual glow! A mountain- quarry 
scarce attracts your notice. Build its blocks into a 
temple! You are thrilled with the sublimest emotions. 
Similarly you are affected when the shapeless iron is con- 



26 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

verted into the productive machine, or the solitary wil- 
derness into the populous city. In the creations of his 
skill, the thought of the maker awakens your own thought, 
and in proportion to the power of the originating thought 
is the power of the excited thought. 

Turn now from Art to Nature ! How does she affect 
us? As nothing else she quickens and expands the intel- 
lect. Tame and poor the impressions of the works of 
man compared with the impressions of the universe of the 
Creator. Wide over its boundless extent philosophers 
question it, and analyze it, and classify it, and tell you 
that what they know is as a cipher to infinity compared 
with what they can never know. Does thought alone 
stimulate thought? Then must the living thoughts in 
nature lure on to eternal discoveries. 

But with thought is also force; and always the thought 
directs the force. Through force the thought finds ex- 
pression. The thought and the force are inseparable, 
and both partake the unity, and the infinity of nature. 
Travel to her farthest realms; search all her atoms; ex- 
plore all her worlds — Thought and Force are everywhere. 
They rule the universe. It has its key in Power, and Intel- 
ligence. 

What is theii source? In the molecules of matter? 
These move, indeed, through electricity, through mag- 
netism, through gravity, through chemical attraction, 
through vegetable force, and mere blind animal energy. 
But plainly they obey a Power and Intelligence they 
never originate. In itself matter is inert. And if Power 
and Intelligence have not their source in atoms, they 
cannot have their source in masses, which are simply ag- 
gregated atoms. To what then must I refer the Power 
and the Intelligence working together through the uni- 
verse? I wish to find their author, and I hear a voice 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 27 

from all the elements of material nature exclaiming, ci not 
unto us, not unto us, not unto us, be this glory. " 

Now I look into myself. My limbs and my organs obey 
my soul. I can direct electricity, overcome gravity, control 
magnetism, command chemical affinity, nullify vegetable 
and animal action, master molecules and masses. I am 
a source of thought and force. My intellect originates 
intelligence, and my will originates power. I can lift 
matter, hurl matter, weigh matter, divide matter, and 
through my body and my soul impress on matter my own 
power and intelligence. Here is a phenomenon to be 
considered. I am a cause. I am an agent. I am a 
person. And only in a person do I perceive this ability 
to originate power and intelligence. By a resistless an- 
alogy, reasoning from myself, I ascribe to a Person the 
Power and the Intelligence of the universe; and since 
the Power and Intelligence of the universe are infinite, 
the Person in whom they inhere must be infinite, and this 
leads me directly to the doctrine of my Bible. 

And surely I may innocently ask, if within the circle 
of my limited capacities to think and feel and will — if 
with my infantine ability to impress myself on my di- 
minutive machine — if I, a point in this amplitude of the 
creation, yet know that in all my thoughts, purposes, 
resolves, affections, passions, achievements, I am ever a 
conscious Personality — to Him who must possess in the 
infinitude of their perfection the attributes I exert so 
feebly — to Him who displays every moment the tokens 
of love and wisdom through the vastness of His universe 
— to Him who must have omnipresence, omnipotence 
and omniscience to originate and sustain a plan so varied 
and so stupendous — to Him shall I so small a thing 
deny the conscious Personality which I feel character- 
izes my own soul and lives in all my acts ? Rather I 



28 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 

believe Philosophy will adopt the language of Scripture 
and exclaim : " Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid 
the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the 
works of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou re- 
mainest ; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, 
and as a vesture Thou shalt fold them up, and they shall 
be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall 
not fail/' 

But the force of our argument is not expended. In- 
deed, we have not yet presented our crucial and crown- 
ing proof. 

Hartmann, we have seen, admits the whole premise of 
Paley, but denies his conclusion. He concedes in nature 
a design but not a designer, and would have a thought 
without a thinker, a will without a wilier, an operation 
without an operator. His Primal Substance, like that 
of Spinoza, is the ancient Egyptian and Boodhistic, and 
modern materialistic, unconsciousness and impersonality 
which, under whatever name, distinguish Pantheism. 
Into the Primal Substance he admits both Intellect and 
Will. But why does he concede Intellect and Will ? 
Because he must account for design by Intellect and for 
Power by Will. But are thought and motion all that he 
is required to explain ? All, if, as Hume and Mill hold, 
the soul is only a series of ideas, feelings and impres- 
sions. We have found the soul more. It has been 
shown that the thoughts, the affections, the volitions, the 
actions must be referred to the Causative Personality ex- 
pressed in each individual by the pronoun I. Hartmann 
must account, not only for the thought and the force, 
but for the consciousness and the personality. Am I an 
agent ? Am I a cause ? Am I a conscious person ? 
How then could an unconscious cause produce in me 
consciousness as an effect ? How could the impersonal 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 29 

evolve from me the personal ? Impossible ! Admit in 
me a causative and conscious Personality and you must 
admit in the Deity a causative and conscious Personality, 
infinite in correspondence with the infinitude proved by 
the vastness of the universe. Here, again, we are 
brought by Philosophy to the God of the Bible forever 
interpreted to man by the personal pronouns: 

" I am the Lord that maketh all things. I have made 
the earth and created man upon it. I, even my hands 
have stretched out the heavens, and all the hosts of 
them have I commanded." 

But the argument is crowned and consummated when 
we pass from abstract reasoning to concrete illustration. 

Behold a planetarium ! Worlds are represented by 
wooden balls. The sun is a globe of brass. Motion 
proceeds from the hand. Not a ray of light beams, 
not a leaf unfolds, not a fly is warmed into life. Repair 
and lubrication are in daily demand. 

Expand the low room into the dome of Heaven ! 
Push out the walls into the infinitudes of space ! Swell 
the brazen ball into a sphere a million of miles in diam- 
eter, throwing out from its fountains of glory rays 
through the midnight of our system, penetrating with 
grateful warmth our distant earth, the gracious parent of 
grasses, flowers, fruits and harvests, causing sea and 
land to teem with animated existence, bringing into 
view valley and mountain and ocean, the pleasing land- 
scape and the wide sky, making the agreeable change of 
day and night with the gold and crimson of the evening 
and the morning and the vicissitudes of the seasons, 
sending out the influences of gravitation and compelling 
immeasurable and innumerable worlds with a motion so 
noiseless mortal ear never caught the sound, and a pre- 
cision so exact as to be expressed in the formulas of 



30 PERSONALITY OF GOD, 

mathematics — above all, vivifying man the visible lord 
of the creation! 

Can this variety and magnificence of power and wis- 
dom be ascribed to a being, such as Hartmann supposes, 
who has intellect and will to produce results so stupen- 
dous and yet is without personality and unconscious of 
his own existence and attributes ? Rather, in accord- 
ance with my common sense and my Bible, let me believe 
that God, a Person, said, " Let there be lights in the 
firmament of heaven, and let them be for signs and for 
seasons, and for days and for years. And God made 
two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and 
the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars 
also — the heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
firmament showeth forth His handy- work." 

More striking yet an illustration drawn from ourselves! 

Compare the Vatican Apollo with a human body ! 
The marble form is indeed an ideal of manly majesty ! 
Almost we imagine divinity on the face and brow. But 
alone this god cannot stand. He is confined to a fixed 
spot. On his countenance is one changeless expression. 
He is but cold, soulless, motionless stone. 

How different a human body ! It grows. From an 
invisible germ it takes shape and proportion, and ex- 
pands into what a glory of strength and majesty ! It 
moves. So perfectly is the law of gravitation control- 
ling the heavens seen in its construction that it pro- 
ceeds over earth with what matchless ease, grace and 
rapidity, uniting extremes almost inconceivable — firm- 
ness and flexibility, strength and swiftness, beauty and 
robustness, the stability of the pillar with the progression 
of the wheel ! It sees. The universe is a panorama of 
form and color to paint on the eye its exquisite images. 
It speaks. Lip and tongue pour forth their sounds to 



PERSONALITY OF GOD. 3 1 

kindle passion, convince the intellect and persuade the 
will, while face and form express themselves with silent 
but resistless power as man stamps himself on man. It 
propagates. From it living billions have peopled our 
world. It is inhabited. We pass from the outer temple 
and find within the glory. Here is a spirit shrinking 
with sensibility, kindling with passion, teeming with 
thought, invincible with resolve — subduing the earth and 
measuring the heavens — grasping after infinity and aspir- 
ing to eternity. 

Now what do our Hartmanns teach ? That while the 
maker of the Vatican Apollo is a conscious personal agent, 
that He who called into existence this body of man ; 
that He who is the author of its hidden susceptibilities, 
its wonderful combinations, its exact mechanisms, its 
secret chemistries ; that He who contrived its varied 
and exquisite relations to air, earth, water, light, heat, 
electricity and so many vegetable and animal organisms, 
and even to suns and systems ; that He, above all, who 
is the creator of this marvellous conscious and personal 
soul, is Himself both unconscious and impersonal. 

Again, in accordance with my common sense, I prefer 
to believe my Bible where it affirms that God said, " Let 
us make man in our image, and let them have dominion 
over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, 
and over the cattle and over all the earth. And God 
created man in His own image, in the image of God 
created He him." " I will praise Thee, for I am fear- 
* fully and wonderfully made : marvellous are Thy works, 
and that my soul knoweth right well. How precious are 
Thy thoughts to me, O God ! How great is the sum of 
them ! When I awake I am still with Thee ! " 



32 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 



LECTURE III. 

MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

WE have presented from nature arguments for the 
unity, wisdom, and personality of the Deity. 
Striking agreements have been shown between the con- 
clusions of science and the declarations of Scripture. 
Buc we are met with the objection that the record of the 
creative work by Moses in Genesis is in conflict with 
modern discovery. The time has come to examine the 
subject. 

But to understand a writing we should study its author 
and its object. Moses, who composed or compiled the 
first five books of the Bible called the Pentateuch, was a 
descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and therefore 
by blood an Israelite. History says that he was born in 
the Egyptian city, Heliopolis. He saw the light when 
the pyramids for many centuries had been looking loftily 
down on a land covered with obelisks, sphinxes, tombs, 
temples, and other noble works of art. Luxor and Kar* 
nak were standing unrivalled in their columned majesty. 
In sculpture, Egypt was grander than Greece, and in 
astronomy next to Chaldea. Now it happened that while 
Moses was yet an infant he was transplanted from the 
home of his parents, who were slaves, into the palace of 
the king, and instructed in every branch of knowledge. 
During forty years he had royal and priestly privileges of 
learning which were superior to those in every other 
country of the globe. As we gather from history, and 



MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 33 

also from his works, his vast natural abilities were corre- 
spondingly improved. 

But he had, moreover, those advantages which seclu- 
sion and meditation give in ripening and mellowing 
wisdom. When in the full maturity of his powers he was 
suddenly translated from the court of a monarch and 
the society of the learned, into the wilderness of Arabia, 
where, amid rugged mountain scenery and a primitive 
people, he had leisure to digest and arrange his knowl- 
edge, and prepare himself for his future mission. 

During a third space of forty years he was ruler, 
prophet and law-giver in Israel. On him was the re- 
sponsibility of saving and guiding and training a nation. 
After having been its deliverer, he communicated its 
code, composed its songs, wrote its history, combining in 
himself such abilities and preparations as have never been 
surpassed. 

Now let us see what was to be accomplished by him in 
the sacred canon. His gifts and education were for a 
purpose. 

The Scriptures consist of sixty-six books, and were 
composed at different times during a period of more than 
fifteen hundred years. They were intended not only for 
the instruction of the Jews, but to illuminate all nations, 
claiming to be a revelation from God of a religion which 
is to supersede all other systems, and establish itself su- 
preme in all the regions of our world. Thus in every 
age and country they challenge the most intense and 
terrible opposition. You may imagine the antagonisms 
to a religion aspiring to be universal. 

But the Scriptures are not only exposed to opposition 
in all lands, and in all times, but at all points. They 
claim to be pure truth dictated by the Almighty. Proved 
error is fatal to their inspiration and authority. The 



34 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

Bible resembles a man vulnerable in every part, and 
hence liable to death wherever wounded. You will not 
wonder that a writer who was to begin such a work was 
nobly endowed, and carefully educated. 

On reflection you will find that even the first chapter 
of such a work was no slight undertaking. What shall 
we say to the description of the creation of a universe; 
of its original elements with their potencies and possibili- 
ties forever* of our earth with its atmosphere and con- 
tinents, its seas, and lakes, and rivers, and oceans, and 
islands, and mountains; of its varied vegetable and 
animal life, including man, of all the visible monarch; 
and then, also, of those innumerable worlds which crowd 
the solitudes of immensity? For a mortal no task could 
be more stupendous. And all to be comprised in a few 
lines to circulate in every language, among every nation, 
and through every age, challenging the universal opposi- 
tion of superstition and science and philosophy by a 
claim to infallible truth and divine authority! 

That I may show you more fully and clearly the diffi- 
culty and the magnitude of the record of the creative 
work, I will endeavor in a single proposition to announce 
its indispensable requisites. 

It must contain nothing that will needlessly contradict the 
prejudices of its own age, and nothing that will ever con- 
tradict the discoveries of any subsequent age. 

Permit me to give an illustration of this proposition. 

Moses unquestioningly believed the earth to be a flat 
surface, and a centre about which the stars, the planets, 
and the sun revolved. For this had he not the testimony 
of his sight? And did he not see stretching around him 
in every direction a seemingly curveless terrestrial plain? 
Did he not behold the celestial luminaries performing 
their daily and nightly circuits about our world? To all 



MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 35 

this he could say, " My eyes are witnesses." Surely it is 
not strange that, generation after generation, men should 
believe what they think they perceive. We have no 
reason to suppose that on these questions Moses had any 
other guides than his eyes, and he was constrained to 
accept their testimony. Is it not then strange, believing 
the earth to be flat, and the sun, moon, and stars to re- 
volve about it, that, in the whole extent of his writings, he 
should in no single word commit himself to a false theory 
universally received until a recent period? I think that 
you will find it interesting to pursue further the sugges- 
tion. 

To show more fully the nature of the difficulty en- 
countered by Moses, and bis marvellous preservation from 
error, I will make two suppositions, first premising what 
is perhaps needless, that the Ptolemaic system is that 
which made the earth the centre round which the sun 
and stars revolved, and that the Copernican system is 
that which makes the sun the centre round which the 
earth and the other planets revolve. 

I. Then suppose that in the first chapter of Genesis 
Moses had enunciated, not the Ptolemaic but the Coper- 
nican system which astronomers now know to be true. 

What would have been the consequence ? He would 
have anticipated the world by three thousand years. Men 
would have been confounded, repelled and disgusted 
when required to believe in apparent contradiction to 
their senses. They would have exclaimed: 

" You declare what is daily proved false by our eyes. 
We see that the earth is not a sphere. We see it to be 
motionless. We see the heavens rolling about it. Each 
star by night and the sun by day are witnesses against your 
revelation." Ignorance would thus have urged objections 
for which Moses himself could have had no answer. I 



36 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

think that I am prepared to show you how powerful the 
useless prejudice he would have excited into the fury of 
a tempest. 

Hear how the learned Lactantius, one of the early 
fathers of the Church, raged against what is now 
proved to be the true theory of our solar system ! 

" Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there 
are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? 
that the crops and trees grow downward? that the rains 
and snow fall upward to the earth? If you inquire of those 
who defend these marvellous fictions why all things do 
not fall into the lower part of the heaven, they reply that 
such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne 
to the middle like spokes in a wheel, while light bodies, 
such as clouds and smoke and fire, tend from the centre 
towards the heavens on all sides. Now I am at a loss 
what to say to those who, when they have erred, steadily 
persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by an- 
other." 

Cosmos of Prague, a Bohemian ecclesiastic, described 
the earth as a parallelogram, flat and surrounded by four 
seas at whose outer edge rose gigantic enclosing walls, 
supporting the vault of the heavens. The structure, he 
said, had two compartments, in one of which men and 
stars move, while in the other dwell the angels who push 
and pull the sun and planets to and fro. 

Even as late as the tenth century around this stupen- 
dous system of error were ranged all the batteries of the 
Church. It was at the peril of life to assault the falsehood. 
Some who rejected it were denounced, silenced and sup- 
pressed. One bold skeptic was taught better by being 
burned. The discoveries of Copernicus, the circumnavi- 
gation of the globe by Magellan, the observations of Gal- 
ileo, the calculations of Newton finally demonstrated the 



MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 37 

rotundity and revolution of the earth, and the whole 
world was persuaded of a truth whose belief had made 
martyrs. 

Now, if such bitter opposition existed even as late as 
the sixteenth century; if the purest and noblest men 
were so adverse to what seemed to contradict their senses; 
if even in times of comparative scientific enlightenment 
flames were the arguments against the facts and laws of 
nature, how strange, how revolting, how impossible 
would the Copernican system have appeared to Chaldean 
and Egyptian astronomers in the times of Moses ? How 
much more hateful to the superstitious multitude, for 
whom, as well as for philosophers, the Bible was in- 
tended as a guide? The reserve of the sacred writers is 
beautiful, delicate and venerable. There was a divine wis- 
dom in not revealing and recording the true system of the 
universe. It is often plausibly asked, " If Moses was in- 
spired by the Author of the creation to describe his work, 
why did not the elected prophet and historian tell the 
whole truth?" The answer is obvious and complete. It 
was better for men to learn the laws of geology and 
astronomy by the slow, laborious and often painful pro- 
cesses of induction as promotive of their enterprise and 
development, and because the Bible, being intended as a 
Book of Salvation, a teacher of duty, a support in trial 
and a guide to Heaven, it was wiser not to anticipate the 
discoveries of science and to puzzle and bewilder the igno- 
rant by communications they could not understand, and 
unnecessary to the grand purposes of a revelation. 

But we will now reverse the case and suppose, 

II. That the first chapter of Genesis had revealed, not 
the Copernican, but the Ptolemaic system. 

For thirty centuries the world would have rested in the 
error. Scarcely any man would have doubted. Occa- 



38 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

sionally would have come suggestions that the sun and not 
the earth was the centre of our system. Pythagoras be- 
fore our era, Capella in the fifth century, and in the fif- 
teenth, De Cusa, had glimpses of the truth, which were 
indeed prophecies of the coming splendor. At Thorn, in 
Prussia, in 1473, Copernicus was born. He received his 
doctor's degree at Cracow, studied astronomy at Bologna, 
taught at Rome, and became a canon at Frauenburg. 
The thought grew in his soul that the sun and the planets 
do not revolve about the earth, but that the earth and the 
planets revolve about the sun. He imperilled his life by 
the publication of his opinions. His work on the " Revo- 
lution of the Heavenly Bodies," reaches him on his death- 
bed Soon his eyes close on it forever. He is in his 
grave beyond the reach of his enemies. But his doctrine 
was not buried. It survives in his book and all the 
ecclesiastical batteries thunder against the truth of the 
eternal God. Arguments are drawn from Aristotle, from 
Aquinas, from Scripture to prove that the earth is the 
centre of the system. Protestant anc! Catholic unite 
against the doctrine as subversive of the faith. Hear 
Luther, the author of the Reformation, the enemy of 
popes, the hero and the herald of intellectual emancipa- 
tion ! He says: 

" People gave ear to an upstart astrologer, who strove 
to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the 
firmament, the sun or the moon." 

But what were the views of the mild and conservative 
Melancthon, the theologian of the Reformation, who so 
often allayed the storms and harmonized the elements? 
He is more violent than the impetuous Luther himself. 
Mark his contemptuous words! 

" The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in 
the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men, either 



MOSAIC COSMJCAL RECORD. 39 

from love of novelty or to make a display, have con- 
cluded that the earth moves, and they maintain that 
neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves. It is a 
want of honesty and decency to assert such notions pub- 
licly, and the example is pernicious." 

Bruno, another advocate of the Copernican system, was 
exposed to the storm from which the grave protected its 
great author. The disciple was pursued from country to 
country; was arrested, imprisoned, burned. His ashes 
were scattered to the winds of heaven to testify the de- 
structive hatred of its enemies to that grand doctrine 
which is at the centre of all astronomical science. 

Not long after Galileo invented his telescope. The 
foes of Copernicus had tauntingly said to the great 
Florentine, " If your doctrine were true, Venus should 
show phases like the moon," and these opposers were 
right. It was a crucial objection for which Galileo had 
no answer. Admitting the force of the argument, in the 
simplicity of his soul he replied, " You are right; I know 
not what to answer; God is good, and will in time find 
an answer to this objection." 

How touching such candor! How beautiful such faith! 
How magnificent the pious astronomer's reward! See 
Galileo with his telescope! He points it to the heavens! 
It is on Venus! Mark the amazement and the triumph 
on the face of the observer! God's time has indeed come 
as Galileo had predicted, and now he beholds the proof 
of his doctrine. The veil of ages is lifted. What a spec- 
tacle of beauty! There shines Venus disclosed first to 
mortal vision, divested of her starlike splendors, and 
showing her golden crescent on the deep blue of heaven! 
Sight confirms reason. The telescope of Galileo has 
verified the argument of Copernicus, and proved by the 
eye the great central truth of our system and our universe. 



4-0 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

But the battle is not over. Rather, it only began with 
this vision of glory. Ecclesiastical thunders burst over 
the astronomer. He is accused as a heretic. He is pro- 
nounced in league with Satan. He is guilty of infernal 
error. In Italy, in Germany, in Holland, in France, the 
great universities condemn the doctrine of Copernicus, 
and the discovery of Galileo. Science and religion 
unite against the everlasting truth of the creation. Still 
Galileo turns his telescopic eye to the heavens. Fresh 
wonders reveal themselves through sense to his intellect. 
He points his instrument to the moon and sees on her 
bright face her valleys and her mountains He dis- 
covers those mysterious spots on the sun. The tempests 
on earth burst into fresh fury with every revelation of 
truth from the heavens. Hell itself seems striving to 
quench the celestial light. At last the Copernican doc- 
trine is formally condemned in the following memorable 
words: 

i( The first proposition that the sun is the centre and 
does not revolve about the earth is foolish, absurd, false 
in theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to 
the Scripture; and that the second proposition that the 
earth is not the centre, but revolves about the sun, is 
absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theological point 
of view at least, opposed to the true faith." 

Galileo is also commanded " to abstain from sustain- 
ing, teaching, or defending that opinion in any manner 
whatsoever, orally or by writing/' 

Nor have we yet reached the saddest act of the tragic 
history. Unequal to martyrdom, the illustrious astrono- 
mer escapes by abjuration the doom of the dungeon and 
the fire. No humiliation was ever more touching. Hear 
how fear by falsehood would escape torture: " I, Galileo, 
being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner, and on my 



MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 4 1 

knees; having before my eyes the Holy Gospels, which I 
touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error 
and the heresy of the movement of the earth." 

Surely such a degradation of genius will appease the 
tyrannic fury of human ignorance. No! When brought 
out from his prison Galileo was deprived of his position, 
separated from his family, exiled from his friends, until 
blind, and old, and wasted, and miserable, he died over- 
come by disease and sorrow. He was buried, not among 
his relatives, nor with funeral ceremonies suitable to his 
genius and discoveries, but borne to a solitary grave, and 
left for a century without a monument or an epitaph. 

But truth prevailed against envy, ignorance, and rage. 
Reason by the telescope compelled the eye to reverse its 
testimony and dispelled the shadows of centuries. The 
discoveries of Kepler, the calculations of Newton, the 
demonstrations of La Place and La Grange have been 
confirmed by daily observations, and innumerable 
methods, until the Copernican system is accepted with 
all the assurance of a mathematical axiom. A school- 
boy would scorn to doubt, and it is believed by the very 
populace in civilized countries. 

From these fierce conflicts you perceive how deeply the 
Ptolemaic system was rooted in the belief of mankind, 
and how hard it was to dislodge from the soul what 
seemed proven by the eye. We cannot doubt that Moses 
thought that the sun and stars revolved about the earth 
as appearances testified. Neither in history nor Scripture 
is there the slightest proof to the contrary. When de- 
scribing the creation of our world and of the heavenly 
bodies, how does it happen that in no instance Moses 
made his own opinions apart of the record? How could 
it be possible that he would not write what he believed? 
Under ordinary circumstances what would men publish 



42 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

but their own convictions? Does this absence of the 
private erroneous views of Moses not raise a most power- 
ful argument in favor of the inspiration of the writer? 
Surely only the Eternal Spirit of Truth could have pre- 
vented the opinions of the historian from being intruded 
into his record, and when there was every occasion and 
every temptation to their introduction. To me this 
seems an incontrovertible proof of inspiration. 

But let us return to our supposition. Had the Ptole- 
maic system been wrought into our Bibles, for ages its 
errors would have been undetected, and have remained 
part of the popular belief. At last, however, the veil 
would have been lifted from the antiquated lie, and the 
Scriptural fabric have been shaken to its foundations, 
and exposed to the scorn and triumph of its enemies. 
Copernicus was a Christian. Kepler was a Christian. 
Galileo was a Christian. Newton was a Christian. How 
would the faith of those good and grand men have been 
shocked and shattered had the error of Ptolemy been 
made part of the Mosaic Record ! When Copernicus be- 
came persuaded of the truth, when Kepler discovered its 
proof, when Galileo confirmed it by his telescope, when 
Newton established it by his calculations, how fearful for 
these pious astronomers had they demonstrated that the 
Book of Nature was opposed to the Book of Revelation ! 

It is related that when the Brahmins of India master 
sufficient mathematics and astronomy to show the falsity 
and absurdity of their monstrous legends of the creation, 
they turn against them with fierce scorn and indignant 
hatred. And surely the great modern discoverers in 
science would have experienced a similar revulsion to- 
wards the Scriptures had they, in accommodation to the 
popular superstitions, taught errors in regard to the con- 
stitution of the universe. 



MOSAIC- CO SMICAL RECORD 43 

You will now, I think, agree with me that the Mosaic 
history of the creation evinced a superhuman wisdom in 
not needlessly contradicting the prejudices of the world 
for three thousand years by prematurely announcing the 
Copernican system; and also that you must ascribe to 
the inspiration of the Almighty that the private belief of 
the narrator in the system afterwards styled Ptolemaic 
was in no instance brought into his record to be dis- 
proved and condemned by the discoveries of our modern 
astronomers which they have compelled all men to re- 
ceive. 

Certainly it is astonishing that a narrative should be so 
constructed that, without the slightest contortion, it 
should be equally suitable to a time of ignorance and a 
time of knowledge; should keep its place during thou- 
sands of years of astronomical error, and defy the as- 
saults of its enemies during hundreds of years of astro- 
nomical truth; and should in an age of darkness on every 
subject of science lay the foundations of a universal re- 
ligion which endures the scrutiny of an age of unex- 
ampled light. With what veneration we should regard 
such a record! It claims to bring us within the vestibule 
of the temple of the universe. No writing ever deserved 
more careful and profound study. 

Nor will our regard for the Mosaic narrative be di- 
minished when we compare it with the Chaldean account 
of the creation procured and deciphered by the learned 
and enthusiastic labors of the late Mr. George Smith. 
Amid piles of broken cuneiform tablets and cylinders in 
the British Museum that gentleman noticed some char- 
acters which seemed to describe the Deluge, and he 
visited the Orient in search of the missing fragments. 
Amid the ruins of Koyunjik his energy was rewarded. 
He found the wanted tablets. But while searching for 



44 MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 

the cuneiform records of the Deluge he discovered also 
those of the Creation. Cylinders of clay exposed for 
ages to the elements, and scattered by Arabs in their wild 
search for treasures, have been brought together after 
centuries of separation, and enable us to contrast the 
puerile traditions of Chaldea, with the sublime Hebrew 
Scriptures. 

In opposition to the unity of the creation as proved by 
Science, we notice especially how polytheistic are the ac- 
counts preserved in the recovered fragments. Chaos is 
a goddess who produces even the inferior deities. We 
have the names of the chief divinities of the Assyrian 
Pantheon. In addition to Tamiat, the universal mother, 
are the god Lahmu, the god Sar, the god Kisar, the god 
Anu, the god Assur, the god Bel, the god Hea, the god 
Ninsiku, the god Niku. Uri the moon is a god, and 
Shamas the sun is a god. 

Imagine Science gravely attempting to reconcile such 
childish inventions with her great discoveries! Accept- 
ing this record our modern astronomer when turning his 
telescope towards the sun and moon would be observing 
a pair of gods, and the navigator would be plowing the 
bosom of his divine mother Tamiat. 

How puerile too the thought and the style! A child 
now would scorn such a record. You could scarce use 
it as a nursery-tale. What addition does it make to our 
knowledge ? Can it stimulate intellect ? Evidently it is 
a whimsical tradition of an ancient but infantine idolatry. 
Rather, it is a polytheistic corruption of the Biblical 
original, which shines with a new beauty and splendor in 
contrast with this dimmed and defaced copy. In the 
comparison we realize how simple, how sublime, how 
majestic is the Mosaic narration ! How it intertwines 
itself with history, and art, and literature! By its bold 



MOSAIC COSMICAL RECORD. 45 

claim to inspiration it challenges Science, and excites the 
world to its investigation. In its exposition it accumu- 
lates around itself the treasures of the learning of all the 
ages of the earth whose creation it so grandly and worthi- 
ly describes. Surely the history of Genesis is a suitable 
introduction for a Religion claiming to be founded on 
the cross of a Divine Saviour, to be thus touched with the 
glory of Godhead, to be a preparative for the solemnities 
of Judgment, and the rewards of the Life Everlasting! 



46 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 



LECTURE IV. 

INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 

MODERN Enterprise has explored Assyria, Egypt, 
Arabia, and also Palestine and the contiguous 
regions with an unexampled sagacity and success. The 
keys to the cuneiform and hieroglyphical writings have 
opened to us a knowledge of the very nations most con- 
stantly connected with the Jews, and which, therefore, 
most frequently appear in the Scriptures. Keener tests 
than those in our possession could not be applied to any 
book. At every point the Bible is exposed to searching 
criticisms. I will adduce a few facts to prove how won- 
derfully modern research confirms the Scriptural Record. 

Although the precise locality may never be ascer- 
tained, it is yet certain that the Bible places Paradise 
near the sources of the Euphrates. And from the 
mountains in that region it is now agreed that the popu- 
lations of the earth have dispersed. Thence Celt and 
Goth and Scandinavian and Slav migrated to Europe, 
and thence came also the inhabitants of China, Japan 
and Hindoostan. The analysis and comparison of 
languages show near, subtle and numerous relationships 
between the Greek, the Latin and Teutonic tongues and 
the Sanscrit of ancient India. Scripture and Science 
unite in testifying that from the lofty table-lands of Asia 
the world was peopled, and that on the same maternal 
summits was spoken the original language of our race. 

Over the earth we have previously proved a primitive 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 47 

monotheism, which finally always experienced polythe- 
istic additions. It is safe, therefore, to conclude that 
the Mosaic narrative revealing God as one is the original 
from which other traditions are the corrupted copies. 
This is in accordance with the universal analogy. Hence 
we may affirm that the wonderful cuneiform accounts of 
the creation, the fall, and the deluge, discovered by Mr. 
George Smith at Koyunjik, are polytheistic perversions 
from Genesis, whose great antiquity is therefore most 
signally confirmed. . 

The early post-diluvians are represented as saying, 
" Let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. They 
had brick for stone and slime for mortar." How pre- 
cisely this corresponds with the regions where the ruins 
of Babylon have been discovered! Out of brick were 
built the vast Assyrian walls, temples and palaces. Piles 
of ruins attest the accuracy of the Mosaic description. 
Indeed the mound of Birs Nimrud furnishes proof that 
the " Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth " was 
built on the remains of the tower of Babel itself. This 
incidental confirmation of the Bible is most striking. Let 
me give the inscription : " Nebuchadnezzar, King of 
Babylon, Shepherd of the peoples ; the repairer of the 
pyramid of the tower! Merodach, the great master, 
created me. Nebo, the guardian over the regions of the 
heavens and the earth, charged my hands with the 
sceptre of Justice. The Pyramid is the temple of 
Heaven and Earth — the seat of Merodach, the chief of 
the gods. The place of the oracles of the spot of his rest 
I have adorned in the form of a cupola with shining gold. 
We say for the other, a former king built it, but he did 
not complete its head. Since a remote time people have 
abandoned it without order expressing their words — I 
did not change it, nor did I take away the foundation 



48 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE, 

stone. I set my hand to finish and exalt its head. I 
made it as it had been in ancient days. I exalted its 
summit." 

Abraham led the wandering life of a Bedouin chief. 
He lived in tents, and owned flocks in the midst of a 
primitive patriarchal simplicity. But he also differed 
widely from the ordinary barbaric leader of wild hordes. 
He showed a culture, a courtesy, a dignity, and a large- 
ness of mind which indicate education. Only a supe- 
rior and disciplined intellect could have left on all ages 
such an impression of moral majesty. But whence the 
cultivation of this tent-dwelling chieftain ? Recent ex- 
plorations enable us to answer the question. Ur, the na- 
tive city of Abraham, was in his time the splendid me- 
tropolis of Chaldea. Stamped bricks reveal the names of 
many early kings. Urukh was a conqueror and builder 
second only to Nebuchadnezzar. He erected in his cap- 
ital three sacred structures, and a temple to the moon 
from whose lofty towers astronomers observed the stars. 
Abraham was then born and educated amid the highest 
culture of his times. Around him too were those costly 
and imposing monuments of idolatry which showed its 
supremacy in his native land, and might well impel the 
friend of Jehovah to flee from its contaminations pre- 
cisely as described in the Scriptures. 

Permit me here to quote a remarkable testimony from 
"Smith's Assyrian Discoveries": " Among the new 
texts discovered during my expeditions to the valley of 
the Euphrates are several inscriptions of great import- 
ance belonging to the early kings of Babylonia. One of 
these is a new text of Assurbanipal relating to the resto- 
ration of the images of the goddess Nana. In the 
Book of Genesis it is stated that in the time of Abraham 
Babylonia was under the dominion of the Kingdom of 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIP TURF. 49 

Elam, and the monarch of the country bore the name of 
Cherdorlaomer, or Kurdurlagamar. In the inscriptions 
of Assurbanipal, who reigned B.C. 668 to 626, we are 
told that when the Assyrian Monarch took the city of 
Shushan, the capital of Elam, B.C. 645, he brought 
away from the city an image of the goddess Nana, 
which had been carried off from the city of Erech by 
Kurdur-Nahundi, the Elamite monarch at the time of 
the Elamite conquest of Babylonia, 1635 years before, 
thus confirming the statement of Genesis that there was 
an early conquest of Babylonia by the Elamites." 

In Kings and Chronicles we are informed that Tiglath 
Pileser, king of Assyria, seized many cities and districts 
of Israel, and even carried captive whole tribes. Rezin, 
king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, had allied 
themselves against Ahaz, king of Judah, who invoked 
against them the aid of Tiglath Pileser. An historical 
tablet discovered at Nimroud most minutely agrees with 
the Biblical narratives. Hear what the Assyrian monarch 
says to perpetuate the memory of his conquests and in- 
crease his glory: 

" Of Rezin, king of Syria, eighteen talents of gold, three 
hundred talents of silver, two hundred talents of copper 
I appointed. Damascus his city I besieged; like a caged 
bird I enclosed him. Pekah their king, and Hoshea, to 
the kingdom over them I appointed; the tribute of them 
I received." 

Sargon is mentioned but once in the Scriptures. His 
name occurs incidentally in the parenthesis of the first 
verse in the twentieth chapter of Isaiah. Nor was 
anything more known of him for ages. He passed 
out of history. His existence began to be ques- 
tioned, and therefore the correctness of the Scrip- 
tures. Now let us see that in the casual mention of a 



50 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 

single royal name their accuracy has been proven. M. 
Botta, in his oriental researches, preceded the more 
brilliant and successful labors of Layard. He, indeed, 
more properly began those splendid discoveries which 
shed so much light on the ancient world. Now most 
wonderful fact! When, in 1842, M. Botta exposed the 
palace at Khorsabad, the first monuments found were of 
this vanished and dubious Sargon. He was one of the 
most extensive builders and magnificent conquerors of 
the Assyrian dynasties. Although small, his palace was 
scarcely exceeded in ornamentation by any royal edifice. 
It was beautified by enamelled bricks, approached through 
a splendid propylcea by a noble flight of steps, and had 
many peculiar attractions. But let Sargon proclaim his 
own existence and achievements in the usual style of royal 
Assyrian magniloquence: 

" At the foot of the Musiri hills to replace Nineveh I 
raised after the divine will and wishes of my heart Hisr-Sar- 
gina, the splendid marvels and superb streets of which were 
blessed by great gods and goddesses. My palace con- 
tains gold and silver and vessels of both these metals; 
iron, the production of many mines, stuffs with dyed saf- 
fron, blue and purple robes, amber, skins of sea-calves, 
pearl, sandal-wood and ebony, Egyptian horses, mules and 
camels, booty of every kind." 

But this is not all the evidence furnished by Sargon to 
the historical accuracy of the Bible. The whole verse in 
Isaiah is, " In the year that Tartan came into Ashdod 
(where Sargon the king of Assyria sent him) and fought 
against Ashdod, and took it." 

Thirty years after the explorations of M. Botta, an 
octagonal cylinder, discovered by Mr. George Smith, was 
found to contain a record of this very conquest of Sargon 
mentioned by Isaiah. 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. $1 

The inscription of this king says, " In my ninth expedi- 
tion to the land beside the great sea, to Philistia and Ash- 
dod I went. Azuri king of Ashdod not to bring tribute his 
heart hardened, and to the kings around him, enemies 
of Assyria, he sent to do evil. Over the people round 
about him his dominion I broke, and carried off Ahimiti, 
son of his brother, before his face. The cities of Ashdod 
and Gimzo of the Ashdodites I besieged and captured." 

Read in Isaiah the haughty address of Sennacherib, king 
of Assyria, to Hezekiah, king of Judea ! The language 
expresses the pride, the disdain, the grandeur of a con- 
queror wearing the crown of the mightiest of monarchies. 
Turn now to the cuneiform histories of the triumphs and 
magnificence of the kingly Assyrian! How precisely the 
descriptions of the Bible are reflected in the words of 
the Smith, Taylor and Bellino cylinders! These corre- 
spondences, however, are of slight significance compared 
with another most remarkable fact. 

The Scriptures relate that Sennacherib "came up 
against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them. ,, 
He then sent a haughty message to Hezekiah demanding 
his submission, denouncing vengeance, and insulting 
Jehovah. Hezekiah humbled himself, prayed in the 
temple to the Lord God of Israel, and through the proph- 
et Isaiah received this answer, " Therefore thus saith the 
Lord concerning the king of Assyria. He shall not come 
into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before 
with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he 
came, the same shall he return, and shall not come into 
this city, saith the Lord. And it came to pass that night 
that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the 
camp of the king of the Assyrians an hundred and five 
thousand. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, 
and went and returned and dwelt in Nineveh." 



52 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 

In the inscriptions of the cylinders we find that Senna- 
cherib made an expedition against Hezekiah. Exactly 
corresponding to the Scriptural record, the Assyrian 
king boasts, " Forty-six of his strong cities, fortresses, and 
small cities which were round them, which were without 
number, with the marching of a host, and surrounding of 
a multitude, attack of ranks, force of battering-rams, 
mining, and missiles, I captured." 

Had he taken Jerusalem, and seized Hezekiah, after 
the style of an oriental despot, we know how he would 
have described his entrance into the Jewish capital, and 
enumerated the spoils of his victory and gloried in the 
fetters of his kingly prisoner. He says that he made 
Hezekiah like " a caged bird in Jerusalem his royal city." 
He says that he "raised towers," around the Hebrew 
metropolis. He says that he " shut the exit of the great 
gate." He says that he " conquered " Hezekiah. He 
says that he detached Judah to the kings of Ashdod, 
Ekron and Gaza. He says that he overwhelmed the 
Jewish monarch with "the fear of the might of his do- 
minion." Isaiah asserted that he should not enter Jeru- 
salem, and Sennacherib asserts everything but that he did 
enter Jerusalem. 

Before the explorations of Botta, Layard and Smith the 
method had been discovered of reconciling the predic- 
tions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel in regard to Zedekiah. 
The former prophet had declared that Zedekiah, made 
captive, should go to Babylon, while the latter foretold 
that Zedekiah should not see Babylon. Although seem- 
ingly irreconcilable, the prophecies were harmonized by 
the facts. After having been made prisoner at Riblah, the 
eyes of Zedekiah were put out. He was then taken to 
Babylon where he died, but which he never saw owing to 
his blindness. But equally striking is another fact never 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 53 

explained until the cuneiform tablets and cylinders dis- 
pelled the mystery. It is recorded in the Chronicles, 
"Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of 
the host of the king of Assyria which took Manasseh 
among the thorns and bound him with fetters and carried 
him to Babylon." Now the question was asked why 
should an Assyrian monarch carry his royal captive to 
Babylon, supposed to be a rival seat of empire, instead 
of Nineveh his own capital? The answer is furnished by 
the inscriptions. Esarhaddon held Babylon tributary, 
and was the only Assyrian king who had his throne in 
that city. This is proved by the bricks inscribed with 
his name discovered in his palace. Living at Babylon he 
carried home his royal prisoner. 

In Daniel Belshazzar appears as the last king of Baby- 
lon. He is described as slain in his banquet-hall when 
the Medes and Persians took the city. But in no ancient 
writer was there mention of such a king as Belshazzar. 
Here was a seeming discrepancy between sacred and pro- 
fane history. Various theories were suggested to relieve 
the difficulty. 

In the year 1854 the explanation was discovered. Sir 
Henry Rawlinson, in a Temple of the Moon, found an 
inscription which informs us that Nabonadius, the usurper 
who succeeded Nebuchadnezzar, married the daughter of 
that monarch, and associated with him his son Belshazzar 
on the throne of Babylon. Nabonadius escaped before the 
fall of the city. Belshazzar remained and was killed as 
described by Daniel. This also explains why Belshazzar 
was styled the son of Nebuchadnezzar. He was indeed 
his grandson. But in oriental usage the grandson is fre- 
quently styled son. Another thing is made plain. Bel- 
shazzar promised Daniel, if he interpreted the vision, that 
he should be the ////Vv/ruler in his kingdom. Nabonadius, 



54 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 

the father was first, Belshazzar the son was second, and 
Daniel, therefore, could be only third. How wonderfully 
in these minute circumstances has modern research con- 
firmed the historic accuracy of the Scriptures! 

The wars of the Jews and their repeated captivities 
brought the nation into close and frequent associations 
with the Assyrians. Especially did the lofty position of 
the venerable Daniel create a most intimate relationship. 
In his writings, in the prophecies of Ezekial, and in the 
narratives of Ezra, references to the customs of the con- 
querors are innumerable. Explorations in the tombs, 
temples and palaces of the old cities of the Tigris and 
the Euphrates give us varied and vivid pictures of dim 
and distant centuries. It is not rash to affirm in this new 
light shed over those ancient periods by the pictures and 
inscriptions, that it would have been impossible for the 
scriptural writers to fabricate so many minute and inci- 
dental agreements. Indeed only by means of modern dis- 
coveries can we comprehend much before obscure and 
unintelligible. 

And when we turn to Egypt coincidences multiply. 
Abraham, Joseph, Jacob make illustrious the connec- 
tion of Israel with the land of the Pharaohs. Four hun- 
dred years of captivity caused the Hebrews to be only 
too well acquainted with their masters. Moses was edu- 
cated in a palace of the most splendid of the monarch- 
conquerors who from the valley of the Nile extended em- 
pire over a large part of Asia and Africa. Now in no 
land were the national peculiarities so striking. The an- 
nual overflows of its wonderful river gave direction to the 
life of Egypt. Embalmment of the dead imparted eccen- 
tricity to the habits of the people. Another remarkable 
custom was the worship of beasts. Thus in dress, 
in manners, in arts, in literature, in religion, the 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 55 

Egyptians were distinguished from all other nations, 
and in the pictures on the tombs the life of each class 
is vividly visible. Inscriptions and papyri increase our 
familiarity with the country of the ancient Pharaohs Yet 
each fresh discovery among the writings and the monu- 
ments along the Nile proves how minute and faithful were 
the delineations of the sacred penman. Moses, although 
a Jew, had the masterful knowledge of an Egyptian. Only 
birth and education in the land could have given this ex- 
actitude which never fails. The Egypt of the Bible is 
the Egypt of the archaeologist. Imposture here would 
seem impossible. 

To illustrate what has been advanced, we will select a 
few facts connected with the Exodus. It will be per- 
ceived that the reigns of the great Rameses and his son, 
Menephtha, furnish all the conditions required by the 
sacred narrative. 

Moses describes the lives of the Israelites as " bitter 
with bondage in mortar, and in brick, and in every man- 
ner of service in the field/' so that their cry reached 
heaven and moved Jehovah. 

Now Rameses was distinguished as a conqueror and a 
builder. He was a cold, haughty, remorseless tyrant. 
His face in stone was not so hard as his heart. Although 
diminished and exhausted by fierce wars, his people were 
yet compelled to erect works numerous and stupendous. 
A papyrus of his reign gives us one of the saddest pic- 
tures ever drawn of the insufferable miseries of kingly 
oppression. Colossal images of himself at Ipsamboul, 
hewn from the hills, were monuments of his victories. 
The porch of the majestic Karnak was covered with his 
battles. His sculptures filled the Theban Ramesseum, 
where gods in stone offered homage to this intolerable 
mortal despot. In the temple of Ptah arose enormous 



$6 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 

statues of himself and his queen, and Tanis bore witness 
to his lavish expenditures. Canals, sphinxes, obelisks 
over Egypt attested his tireless enterprise and boundless 
extravagance. Nearly every ruin along the Nile bears 
the name of this Pharaoh, whose collective works rival 
the pyramids. But Rameses bought his glory with the 
toil, tears, and blood of his people. His captives espe- 
cially were wasted and tortured by labors and punish- 
ments. The temples of his gods were reared on the 
graves of men. 

More than all others did the Israelites suffer. It has 
been ascertained from the papyri and the monuments 
that the gigantic Asian wars of Rameses were really in 
self-defence. His empire was threatened by a powerful 
confederacy, and while victorious he was yet fighting for 
existence. Now the land of Goshen, occupied by the 
Israelites, lying next to Asia, was exposed to incursions, 
and had to be fortified by an immense wall. The Pithom 
and Rameses mentioned in our Bibles are discovered to 
have been magazines of supplies. In Exodus they are 
called treasure-cities, but the Hebrew would be more 
properly translated store-cities. They were, indeed, 
depots of grain, and the ruins of Rameses are vast piles 
of brick which composed just such structures as the slaves 
of Goshen would erect in Goshen. Asian themselves, 
and suspected therefore of sympathies with the Asian 
enemies of a Pharaoh, they would not be spared by their 
task-masters. Thus modern research proves the precise 
conditions depicted in the Book of Exodus. 

Egyptologists have also discovered a writing vividly 
describing a chain of fortified cities erected from Pelu- 
sium to Heliopolis and among these are the Rameses and 
Pithom of Exodus. One of the papyri narrates a recep- 
tion of the monarch into the city bearing his name. More 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. S7 

than this. The Hebrews are officially recorded as the 
builders. In a papyrus in the Museum of Leyden the 
Scribe Kautsir reports to his superior Baken-ptha that 
" he has distributed the rations among the soldiers, and 
also among the Hebrews who carry the stones to the great 
city of King Rameses. ,, 

Shishak, or Sheshonk, is the first Pharaoh whose per- 
sonal name is recorded in the Scripture. It is on his 
monuments also we first find mention of the Kingdom of 
Judah. Rehoboam rejected alliance with Shishak, and 
attempted to escape from his yoke. The Egyptian mon- 
arch advanced against Jerusalem, and the Jewish king 
submitted. Precisely corresponding to these facts, as re- 
lated in the Bible, is a great bas-relief on the outer wall 
of the hypostile hall of Karnak. The Scripture says that 
Shishak " took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah," 
and the inscription gives the names of cities of Judah men- 
tioned in the Scripture Among the bound figures with 
cords about their necks, emblematic of subjection by 
conquest, the most conspicuous bears the title "Jehouada- 
Malek." This may be translated, " The land of the 
King of Judah." 

Recent explorations also explain why, as recorded in 
Exodus, the Egyptians were afraid the Israelites would 
" join their enemies, and fight against them, and so get 
them up out of the land." 

The wars and works of Rameses had exhausted his 
kingdom. His statues, sphinxes, obelisks and temples 
stood on hearts and lives. The people were groaning un- 
der the weight of magnificent monuments erected for the 
glory of a tyrant who despised his toilers and called him- 
self their god. During his life the bold military genius 
of Rameses awed his subjects, and the tempest was de- 
tained. But his death loosed storm and earthquake. 



58 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE, 

Menephtha, his son, paid the price of his father's glory. 
The indignant hate of an oppressed and impoverished 
people made this Pharaoh a gloomy and suspicious des- 
pot. 

Menephtha dreaded the Asian enemies with such dif- 
ficulty restrained by the skill and courage of his father. 
An alliance between these and the Israelites was a per- 
petual menace. Thus the Hebrew slaves in Goshen, be- 
tween Asia and Egypt, held the keys of the kingdom of 
the Pharaoh. Joined to his foes they could shake his 
throne. Hence he sought by increased toil, to break the 
spirit of his injured and desperate bondmen and to re- 
duce their numbers by the murder of their children. 

The account of the Plagues also receives fresh illustra- 
tion in the light of the hieroglyphic writings and monu- 
ments. 

In Goshen the god of Pithom was a serpent. An asp 
was an emblem of the divine Kneph. Serapis was often 
represented as a reptile. Yet the rod of Moses, con- 
verted into a serpent, devoured the serpent-gods of 
Egypt. 

The Nile was also a deity. It was an object of wor- 
ship as a source of life, while blood was the emblem of 
Egypt's great satanic enemy. How significant and ter- 
rible the first plague to a nation of such idolaters! The 
bountiful Nile, adored as Osiris, becomes itself the red 
symbolic blood of the dreaded and detested Typhon. 

Nor were the subsequent visitations of the displeasure 
of Jehovah less suggestive. Each was a blow at some 
superstition of the national idolatry. Also, in the strug- 
gle between the king and the prophet, in the flight, the 
pursuit, the escape, the destruction, and, as now ascer- 
tained, in each topographical detail by land and by sea, we 
perceive how modern research has cast over the picture 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 59 

that lurid light befitting the overthrow of a tyrant predes- 
tined to his ruin. 

And the harmonies do not cease when we pass into 
that " terrible wilderness." The whole journey from the 
Nile to Sinai, and from Sinai to the Jordan, can now be 
explained and illustrated. What a minute knowledge 
had the historian of the Exodus of that fearful and deso- 
late region! How exquisite his local coloring! How 
faithful his masterful pencil! When we read the old 
biblical narrative we feel that we are amid the very scenes 
so vividly depicted by the modern traveller. 

I will select a single, but most striking proof. 

The place of the declaration of the Law is described as 
a precipitous mountain around which were encamped 
four millions of people. But in the region of Sinai is 
there a spot answering to such conditions? The country 
is a terrible scene of wild, gigantic, volcanic mountains. 
Innumerable peaks lift their brows of ragged rocks into 
heaven. But are any accessible to a multitude? In im- 
mense regions not a valley would accommodate the 
Hebrew host. Piled and seamed with splintered rocks 
the narrow gorges are bounded by walls of perpendicular 
granite. Many travellers puzzled over the difficulties. 
Volumes were written and theories were endless. Finally 
an expedition was sent out under the Director-Gene- 
ral of the British Ordnance Survey. Thus was secured 
a trained military experience, without any possibility of 
clerical bias. Two captains of Royal Engineers were in 
the party, and also one of the most learned Professors of 
Arabic in the. world. By months of labor the entire 
region about Sinai was surveyed and mapped. One 
peak was selected unanimously as uniting all the require- 
ments of the Mosiac narrative. Its picture makes this 
visible. From the midst of a valley amply wide and level 



60 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 

for the Hebrew encampment, abrupt as the sides of an 
altar, Ras-Susafah, the rival of Jebel Musa, lifts itself in 
solitary grandeur, fitted in every way to be that sublime 
summit on which the elected nation witnessed the cloud 
and storm and fire when the Law was given to Moses by 
Jehovah. 

Entering Palestine we find that every hill and vale and 
stream and ruin, has been examined. Jew and Greek, 
Protestant and Romanist, men of every sect and every 
nation have been visiting the Holy Land during cen- 
turies. Travellers and residents, pilgrims and warriors, 
believers and infidels, have united in the search. The 
Land and the Book have been indefatigably compared. 
Recently has been applied a crucial test. An English 
Palestine Exploring Fund is devoted to the critical 
examination of Judea, and a committee a few years since 
was appointed to search the sacred soil with an unsparing 
scrutiny. The substructions of the temple of Jerusalem 
have been most laboriously examined. Beneath the 
accumulations of centuries, walls, vaults, sewers, arches, 
galleries were discovered and described. Royal En- 
gineers brought to these explorations the enterprise, 
exactitude, and experience of the military profession. 
Their measurements and drawings evince the most 
scrupulous accuracy. Every discovery harmonizes with 
the Bible. Amid a vast mass of confirmatory knowledge, 
there is one slight fact inestimable in its importance. Its 
insignificance gives point and power to its testimony. 

Solomon renewed the friendship which had existed 
between his father and the Phoenician Hiram, king of 
Tyre. It is said in the Scriptures, " They brought great 
stones, costly stones, and hewed stones to lay the founda- 
tion of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram s 
builders did hew them; so they prepared timber and 
stones to build the house." 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE. 6 1 

You will observe that hewed stones were brought to the 
foundations, and that the Syrians, who were Phoenicians, 
assisted the Hebrews. Prepared at the quarry, they 
would have quarry marks. Those dressed by Phoenician 
masons would bear Phoenician signs. Now amid the 
earliest substructions of the temple are foundation-stones 
on which are Phoenician letters in red paint, fresh after 
the concealment of centuries, and plainly Phoenician 
quarry-marks made by the hands of Phoenician work- 
men, such as the Scriptures inform us had been employed 
by king Solomon. 

In August, 1868, the Rev. Mr. Klein, an Anglican 
clergyman, attached to the Jerusalem Mission Society? 
was informed of the existence of an inscribed stone which 
had never been seen by a European. He found it in the 
Land of Moab, and in a perfect state of preservation. 
The Prussian government endeavored to obtain a firman 
for the possession of the stone. Negotiations were pro- 
tracted and complicated. Finally the greedy and sus- 
picious Arabs kindled a fire, and throwing cold water on 
the heated stone, broke it into fragments. Imperfect 
impressions were, however, secured. We find in Kings 
and in Chronicles the name of Omri, king of Israel, and 
we discover the same monarch amid the mutilations of the 
Moabite stone. 

We will complete these isolated proofs by coming down 
a thousand years in the history of the world. The inter- 
mediate testimonies are beyond our power to enumerate. 

In the Book of Acts we have a most vivid picture of a 
popular tumult in Ephesus. The nice natural touches in 
the simple narrative are more effective than any art. Paul's 
sermons had caused many magical books to be burned, 
and his miracles had excited a profound interest. Idola- 
try began to be alarmed, angry and vengeful. A shrine- 



62 INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE, 

maker whose craft was endangered first artfully infuri- 
ated his fellows, and then appealed to the other artisans 
to guard the honor of their patroness, the divine Diana, 
the object of their worship, and the giver of their wealth, 
fame and magnificence. Stirring in these mad Ephesians 
was there a blind prophetic instinct dimly present of the 
approaching times when the Church would empty the 
temple, overthrow the image, and bring to the Cross those 
proud and pampered idolaters? The people rush to the 
theatre. Wild and furious cries succeed. Fierce and 
prolonged the agitation, and had Paul been visible, it 
would have ended in murder, And we perceive in the 
tumult all the excesses peculiar to a democracy. We are 
in the midst of citizens accustomed to discuss and decide 
their own measures. A popular speech begins and ends 
the assemblage. 

About ten years since some explorations at Ephesus gave 
this narrative of the Acts a most remarkable illustration. 

An English architect, Mr. Wood, burned with a wish 
to find the buried temple of Diana. In regard to its site 
ancient authors were contradictory, confusing and mis- 
leading. Standing amid a wide scene of desolate ruins 
the solitary explorer saw nothing to guide in his work. 
He began blindly, and long had no reward for his toil 
and money but deep, gaping pits, and provoking piles of 
earth. Exposed to malaria, assaulted by disease, im- 
perilled by assassination, with slight patronage, and 
irritating opposition, he persevered through six fruitless 
years, when some marbles in the Great Theatre gave him 
an unexpected clew. Finding first the Magnesian and 
Coressian gates, he cut his way through streets of tombs 
and the soil of the sacred grove, until he struck the foun- 
dation on which the temple for centuries had supported 
its pillared majesty. 



INCIDENTAL PROOFS OF SCRIPTURE 63 

The marbles of the theatre were mostly records of 
decrees proposed and passed in the Agora. They re- 
veal the life of Ephesus for five centuries. We see that 
the democratic constitution strangely given by the con- 
quering Alexander, had been perpetuated to the times of 
the Roman Emperors. All begins and ends with the 
people. The citizen dominates the assembly. Each 
motion and debate has in view the glory of Ephesus, and 
the temple as the centre of that glory. When we read 
the inscriptions of the unburied martfles of the theatre, 
we are amid the scenes so graphically described in the 
Acts. We breathe the air of the same popular assembly. 
With a spark we can see how the citizens would kindle 
into an agitation fierce as that which raged about Paul. 
The very technical Greek words signifying temple-warden 
and scribe are found on the Ephesian marbles and in the 
Scriptural records. 



6\ A DAP TA TION OF CHRIS TIANIT F. 



LECTURE V. 

ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

A RELIGION from Heaven should meet the uni- 
versal needs of our Humanity. Such a requisite 
is fundamental and indispensable. A system revealed 
by God will bear the impress of God, and in nothing 
more than in its adaptation to a grand and beneficent 
purpose. Has Christianity this presumption in its favor? 
Before presenting its positive proofs, permit me to show 
that it is a religion having the visible signature of God 
because it is so perfectly suited to the great wants of 
man 

And I begin with a lesson from Idolatry itself. In the 
human heart is a powerful tendency to worship through 
images. Pictures and statues please the eye and excite the 
fancy, and by their grace and beauty attract the multi- 
tude to the temple, and sometimes may possibly assist in 
the contemplation of the invisible Supreme. Owing to 
their abuse m sensualizing and degrading the soul, they 
were forbidden by the Mosaic Law, and yet after ages of 
instruction Idolatry has in our world the largest number 
of votaries. It must therefore testify to a universal need 
in man. Each carved or pictured image in the pagan 
temple witnesses the extent and potency of a desire for 
faith in some superior represented being deserving trust 
and worship. Yet by the canvas and the statue Idolatry 
cannot satisfy this yearning. The soul grows out of its 
superstition and scorns the image it adored. Gods even 



ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY, 65 

in the beautiful and majestic forms of Grecian genius, 
could not appease the yearning which ever cries in man. 

Now Christianity acknowledges the need to which 
Idolatry testifies. Rather, I should say, Christianity is 
designed for that need. And surely there is a strong 
presumption in behalf of a religion which, admitting the 
universal need witnessed by Idolatry, makes to that need 
its prime appeal by presenting as an object of faith, love 
and adoration a Being at once Creator and Sovereign of 
the universe; in His existence eternal; in His presence, 
power and knowledge without a limit; in His justice, and 
in His mercy, and in every conceivable perfection unsur- 
passable. Christianity thus lifts man to the dream and 
ideal of his soul. The heart wants the Infinite for 
trust. The reason wants the Infinite as a cause for 
nature. The imagination wants the Infinite to satisfy 
its aspirations for perfection. In his fear and impotency, 
amid change and death, awed by the vastness of the uni- 
verse and the shadow of eternity, man reaches out to 
the Infinite for help with a cry which will not be stifled, 
and Christianity, like a mother, would care for this im- 
portunate human infant. 

But by the idol of the temple stands the altar. In 
the blood and flame of the victim what is expressed? 
Here is another significant lesson. Life is given to ex- 
piate sin. How powerful the impulse which, overcom- 
ing the selfish greed for property, wastes it by knife and 
fire! Rivers of blood have flowed in atonement. The 
flames of sacrifice might enwrap a world. However 
superstitious this blind wish for propitiation, it is yet too 
deep and overmastering to be overlooked. It expresses 
the soul, and is recognized by Christianity. Consider 
the expiation she would offer! By light and gravitation 
has Science proved the unity of the universe? The Moral 



66 A DAP TA TION OF CHRIS TIA NIT V. 

Law is wide as the physical. To meet its claim, Christian- 
ity points to Jesus Christ on His Cross as a satisfaction 
to the eternal justice of the Godhead, and also as a proof 
of the eternal love of the Godhead by the offer of a 
human life exalted in its worth to infinitude by an ever- 
lasting union with the Godhead. No thoughtful man 
can mock such a scheme. It appeals to the most profound 
needs of humanity, and commands our attention, secures 
our respect, and inspires with a desire to investigate its 
awful and sublime claims to our acceptance. 

In addition to the image and the altar, Idolatry has the 
/aver. What meant the sacred water of the temple? It 
was a symbol of purity, and showed the wish to escape 
moral defilement. Among the ancients lustrations by 
water cleansed individuals, cities, kingdoms, empires. 
Now, the Brahmin's life is to avoid pollution, and the 
Ganges is the laver of India. The ablution of the Mos- 
lem precedes his prayers. In all ages and races, by 
varied rites, humanity has expressed this consciousness 
of moral impurity, and this yearning for moral deliverance. 
Thus the laver of the Jewish temple had no narrow na- 
tional significance, but was a universal symbol. Water, 
however, is the sign, not the substance. A true religion 
must offer something deeper than bodily baptism. Here 
Christianity has another claim to our regard. Not rest- 
ing in the external symbolic application, she would pen- 
etrate the spirit, and renew the soul of man by the 
power of his Creator. She aspires to restore our 
lapsed and defiled humanity by the energy of a Divine 
Regeneration. We do not here assert that she vindicates 
her claim. We only affirm that in her provision for our 
moral renovation by the Holy Spirit she increases her 
title to our respectful consideration. 

Often, also, in the temple of Idolatry was to be found 



ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 6/ 

the Oracle, attesting a desire to know the will of the 
deity. Is the god propitious? Man would have a sign 
of the favor of Heaven. Thus, too, the Oracle expresses 
the soul. Idolatry, however, leaves the nations in painful 
doubt of acceptance. This is the darkest shadow over 
the pagan world. But, even through the sacrifice of the 
temple the priest of Jehovah was authorized to pronounce 
the absolution of the penitent and obedient offerer. In 
the New Testament was conferred power to forgive 
sins, and promise was made that faithful believers should 
have the abiding witness of the Holy Ghost. Such a 
provision, by its adaptation to an attested need, is a strong 
additional presumption in favor of Christianity. 

Idolatry had another characteristic not yet noticed. 
All religions began in an acknowledgment of the Divine 
Unity, but were finally corrupted into the multiplication 
of deities and images. An infinite spiritual being seemed 
too lofty for human apprehension. By an image the sub- 
limity of God must be reduced to the feebleness of man. 
Idolatry was thus the wish to make the Divine visible in 
the painted or sculptured form in which seemed to meet 
earth and Heaven. And in answer to this profound 
demand of the soul was the Incarnation. To satisfy the 
human breast God and man were united in the person of 
the visible Christ. Adapted to so deep and wide a need 
of our world, Christianity should attract to the investi- 
gation of those evidences by which she would establish 
her authority as a Revelation from Heaven. 

And over all in the temple — image, altar, laver and 
oracle — Idolatry throws the veil of an awful mystery. 
By every aid of art the impression is deepened and inten- 
sified. This, too, grew out of the soul and was recognized 
by Christianity. Crowning her system is the sublime 
mystery of the Trinity. The existence of three Divine 



68 AD APT A TIOAT OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Persons in one everlasting Godhead may well sink man 
forever into awe, and exalt him into reverence. 

Nor must we forget that Idolatry testified to a Moral 
Law. As in the fragments of a mirror her votaries 
beheld the shattered image of eternal Truth. But 
ever the broken rays became obscured by the mists of 
passion, or the pride of reason. Conscience in the human 
breast was never wholly silenced. Yet in the lives and 
writings of the most virtuous and eminent ancient philos- 
ophers what gropings in moral gloom! What bewilder- 
ments of error! Amid the most pure and sublime senti- 
ments what confusion inextricable of right and wrong! 
In their loftiest estate they gave evidence that human 
nature was only a splendid ruin. Often they admitted 
their moral darkness, and waited and yearned and prayed 
for the light. No spectacle in the universe can be more 
touchingly sad than a Socrates longing for a spiritual 
illumination he consciously never received. And what- 
ever their fragmentary merits, the ancient philosophers 
were deficient in authority. Only a Sovereign can im- 
pose and reveal a Law. Now the Scriptures profess to 
appease this cry of our humanity for moral illumination 
by a declaration of Truth which is a transcript of the 
Deity. In the Old Testament the Law claims to have 
been announced amid cloud and lightning, and thunder 
and earthquake, to impress the senses of a rude people; 
and in the New Testament to be manifested in the pre- 
cept and example of a Divine Saviour. Thus the Bible 
presents itself as the Moral Statute Book of the world 
imposed by the Almighty Monarch of the Creation, and 
guarded by His sanctions of Life and Death everlasting. 
On personal beings it enjoins personal responsibility to a 
personal Sovereign. Here we have the simplest conceiv- 
able moral philosophy based on the requirement of su- 



ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY, 69 

preme love to God and equal love to our neighbor. 
While the law of the archangel, it is comprehensible by a 
child. Our duty to an earthly parent is the easy illus- 
tration of our obligation to the Father of the universe. 
And all this simple and sublime teaching made practical, 
impressive and beautiful in the life and death of Jesus 
Christ! What could possibly more commend Christi- 
anity to our esteem and consideration! 

Temples of Idolatry had also emblems of Immortality. 
A winged circle in Assyria symbolized eternity. The 
Egyptian papyri give us the pilgrimages of the soul 
through the infernal hemisphere, and elaborate formularies 
for the worship of the dead. Greece had her Olympian 
and her Plutonian regions, and from her Rome borrowed 
the images by which she represented the shadowy realms 
of the departed. The gods and the ghosts of Homer and 
Virgil indicate the popular opinions of the classic nations 
in regard to the future of man beyond the tomb. Pindar 
in his odes assumed the existence of the dead, and the 
grand lesson of Greek tragedy was retribution in the 
Stygian realms. Philosophy taught variously that the 
separated soul existed as a magnet, as fire, as light, as 
air, as water, as number, as harmony, or, resembling a 
star, as the essence of motion. But when Plato, Socrates, 
and Cicero would by argument support the popular faith, 
we see how terrible those abysses of doubt into which the 
most gifted spirits plunged themselves in blind and hope- 
less struggle. Confronted with the mysteries of life and 
the agonies of death, the belief of the purest and wisest 
was exchanged for the lethargy of a dumb despair. 

On mere childish assumptions and platitudes Socrates 
based his faith in a future life. However we may respect 
his creed, his arguments are contemptible. He proves 
immortality by a mere play of words, or deduces it from 



JO A DAP TA TIOA T OF CHRIS TIA NI T K. 

the fable of the soul's pre-existence, and transmigrations 
into animals. With such feeble supports for his faith it 
is not wonderful that Socrates, amid the torpors of death 
ordered a cock to iEsculapius, and expressed that doubt 
as to a hereafter which cast over the ancient philosophy 
a shadow from the midnight of the soul. 

And did Cicero often seem to glow with confidence in 
God and immortality? It was the mere enthusiasm of the 
orator kindled by his imagination. In his villa amid his 
books, surrounded by friends and luxuries, fresh from 
the triumphs of the Senate, hope inspired his eloquence; 
but under the shadow of misfortune his unmanly tears 
and gloom made him a spectacle of laughter and con- 
tempt in his own time and for all ages. After his sono- 
rous and splendid sentences, which seemed bright with 
assured immortality, he consoled himself and his friends 
with the prospect of absolute insensibility in death. So 
flimsy and unstable was the hope of Cicero in his here- 
after. 

Indeed, the question of our immortality is insoluble by 
philosophy. Shall man risk his eternity on the fact that 
spring revives flowers, or that worms are changed into 
butterflies? Perverted into arguments such illustrations 
become contemptible. Nor from the desire in man for 
immortality can you establish the truth of immortality, 
since for innumerable desires there is no discoverable 
satisfaction, and therefore the presence of the desire can- 
not prove the fact of the satisfaction. The whole subject 
to our human reason is involved in mist and mystery. 
To mortals over the grave is an impenetrable shadow. 
The stiff limbs, the dumb lips, the blank in the face of 
the dead seem nature's proofs of an extinguished soul. 

In a way different from all other systems would Chris- 
tianity assure man eternal joy. For body and soul his 



AD APT A TION OF CHRIS TIANIT V. J I 

immortality is proposed as the grand end of a remedial 
scheme designed eternally by the Sovereign Creator of 
the universe, disclosed dimly in the beginnings of our 
race, age after age revealed in the brightening light of 
types, promises and predictions, entwined with the whole 
history of man, and converging itself into a Divine 
Saviour whose resurrection, proved by witnesses, is a 
pledge and symbol of a glory in his own everlasting 
image, and an ideal to exceed every mortal thought, 
aspiration and imagination. This sublime and compre- 
hensive plan is represented, not as an expedient to meet 
an emergency, but the predetermined purpose of the 
Almighty, to which was subordinated the creation of our 
world, and perhaps the universe itself. 

With such a divine origin, ordination and end, the 
scheme of Christianity is described as the centre of all 
human history, the key to all human progress, the answer 
to all human speculations, the secret of all human felicity, 
and also the true clew, guide, and test of each individual 
human life. Compared with other systems it excites also 
oui esteem by the wise reserve, the exquisite delicacy, the 
fidelity of justice, and the tenderness of mercy, the apt- 
ness, grandeur and majesty with which, in matchless 
words and images, it depicts a judgment for our world, 
and the consequent everlasting state of men, where the 
equities of the divine administration will be forever visibly 
vindicated before the universe. 

Christianity does not, therefore, present itself as a 
speculation. It is not the system of a philosopher. It is 
not the dogma of schools. On the contrary, it claims to 
be a revelation of the will of the Almighty, and impressed 
with his authority as the Sovereign Creator. 

Now a scheme with such pretensions requires authen- 
tication. Like philosophical opinions, it could not rest 



72 ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

on philosophical arguments. So supported it would sink 
into a mere human system. He who claims that he re- 
veals the will of God must exhibit credentials which 
prove the authority of God. In no other way possible 
or conceivable could he secure faith in his mission. 
Attesting signs and wonders are in such a case the first 
demand of reason. The scriptural appeal to the evi- 
dences of Omnipotence in the miracle, and to Omnisci- 
ence in the prophecy, was unavoidable. The ambassador 
from Jehovah must exhibit the signature of Jehovah. 

Here Christianity differs from all other religions. 
They are without proof. Idolatry attempts no argument. 
She erects shrines, altars and temples, but never inquires 
into the grounds of her faith. Subjected to the scrutinies 
of reason, false religions soon dissolve into superstitions. 
But Christianity rests her claim on facts. She does not 
transport us to the Porch, Lyceum, or Academy to hear 
philosophical disquisitions, but surrounds us with the 
witnesses of a risen and ascended Saviour, and on the 
plain principles of legal evidence challenges us to investi- 
gate her testimony. To simplify her methods, and re- 
duce her proofs to eye, and ear, and touch, she con- 
verges all the rays of her types, promises, prophecies, 
and miracles on the Person of Jesus Christ. She con- 
centrates her past, present and future on a Person. She 
embodies her doctrine in a Person. She expresses her 
spirit in a Person. She causes all the magnificence of 
her supernatural evidence to revolve about a Person. 
Her propitiation is by the death of a Person. Her moral 
system is exemplified in a Person. Her Immortality is 
through the resurrection of a Person. The glory of her 
ideal in Heaven is in a Person. All her joys, employ- 
ments and exultations have their source and centre in a 
Person who is the visible and eternal symbol of Godhead 
to an adoring universe. 



ADAPTATION OF CHRISTIANITY. J$ 

Divested of philosophical abstractions, our inquiries 
thus become exceedingly practical. Everything begins 
and ends in the grand crucial proof intended to show 
that Jesus Christ is the Divine Saviour of the world. 

Moreover, the volume in which Christianity is conserved 
and diffused recommends itself to our examination. In 
its merely human aspect the Bible is venerable as the ac- 
cumulation of the wisdom of centuries. Sublimely it re- 
cords the creation of our world. Penned by writers of 
every class of society, and every variety of genius, 
adapted to the most ordinary intelligence, yet often rising 
naturally into a matchless beauty and majesty, its words 
at once illuminate the reason, console the heart, impress 
the memory, and exalt the imagination. It is a book 
loved by the poor, studied by the learned, praised even 
by the skeptic, and prized by all nations and ages, a 
guide in morals, a help in trouble, a companion in soli- 
tude, a chart and a compass for life's voyage. The Bible 
is thus a fitting depository for the truths of salvation, 
equally suited to man and worthy of God. Its character 
is a potent presumption disposing to examine its title to 
a divine inspiration and authority. 

Nor has the scheme of religion offered our world in 
the Scriptures been cast carelessly on the billows of time. 
Its preservation has been wisely committed to the ark of 
the universal Church. The professed Oracles of Heaven, 
like mere human compositions, were not left to the casual 
preferences, and shifting prejudices of the changeful 
generations. Always the Bible has been guarded by an 
established organization. Under the old dispensation it 
was watched by the Jewish priest, and under the new 
dispensation it is proclaimed by the Christian minister. 
Over the world, through the Church, the Scriptures are 
brought to the head and the heart by all the power of 



74 ADA P TA TION OF CHRISTIANIT Y. 

human intelligence and human sympathy. Christianity 
thus is not a waif on the solitary waters. It points the 
inquirer to the conserving and witnessing Church, and 
by an organization wise, venerable and universal, pre- 
disposes us to the scheme intended to be perpetuated and 
diffused. 

Christianity thus seems to embrace whatever is desir- 
able or possible in a religion. A revelation of the exist- 
ence and perfections of an Almighty Creator! In the 
death of a Divine Saviour infinite satisfaction to the 
eternal justice of Godhead, and infinite manifestation of 
the eternal love of Godhead! Mercy free to all who ac- 
cept its offer! Renewal of man by the power of God! 
A Divine witness of Pardon ! A Divine Law! A Divine 
Light! A Divine Example! A Divine Volume! A Di- 
vine Church! Immortality through a Divine Saviour! 
A Heaven whose glory is the ideal of felicity ! Salvation 
in a plan of eternal love and wisdom, leading man to the 
Fatherhood of God ! 

We have conceded that existence of a desire does not 
prove a satisfying object. Yet it raises a strong presump- 
tion that there is or will be such an object, and hence 
Christianity is within the circle of natural analogies. 
Vegetables and animals are supplied with what is needful 
for their organisms. Usually for his physical and intel- 
lectual sustenance man finds provision. The eye needs 
light and has light. The ear needs air and has air. The 
lungs need oxygen and have oxygen. The body needs 
food and has food. The heart needs objects to love and 
has objects to love. The soul needs knowledge and has 
knowledge. Should not then analogy carry us onward to 
the supply of our spiritual yearnings ? Shall this cry for 
pardon, purity, trust, worship, immortality be forever 
stifled ? Were his holiest, loftiest, mightiest desires im- 



AD APT A TION OF CHRISTIANITY* 75 

planted in man to mock and torture him ? Was he made 
to be an orphan in the universe ? But what shall fill this 
void of the soul ? Paganism ? What! Shall we go back- 
ward to the night of a world's exploded superstitions to 
satisfy natures which must advance towards light ? Pagan- 
ism is a dumb witness to wants it can never supply. 
Shall we resort to Philosophy ? Centuries have proved 
her impotence to resolve our questionings about God and 
Immortality. Shall we embrace Mohammedism ? The 
question deserves no answer. Or shall we seek refuge 
in the materialisms of Science? In mathematics and 
machineries the soul cannot find what it would love and 
adore forever. Comfort comes not from a Gospel of De- 
spair. Nor can you more repress the cry of a soul than 
you can fill with straws the abysses of the ocean, stop 
with dust the fires of a volcano, or arrest with breath the 
revolutions of a world. It is for man, Christianity, or 
thirst and hunger everlasting. 

Remember that these considerations are urged as pre- 
sumptions, and not as proofs. They are only to prepare 
your minds for the investigation of those positive evi- 
dences on which, we believe, Christianity is founded like 
a temple on eternal rock. 

Before leaving the subject permit me to make a dis- 
tinction too often overlooked. 

In establishing a law of the universe Science demands 
that the proof be irresistible. The speculations of Coper- 
nicus in regard to the sun as the centre of our system 
were insufficient. Ocular evidence through the telescope 
of Galileo had to conclude the inquiry. Nor were the 
laws of Kepler accepted until confirmed by the methods 
of Newton based on more exact observations. And so 
in all departments of Science. Proofs must be clear, 
cogent, overwhelming. But far different with the truth 



?6 ADAPT A TION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ascertained. That may be forever beyond our human 
comprehension. Each path to the temple of Truth must 
be plain and direct, but when we are within the sacred 
edifice we may be forever dwarfed by our littleness, and 
humbled by our ignorance in the midst of such variety, 
magnitude, and majesty. 

Shall it be different with Christianity? Always her 
Scriptures follow the analogies of Nature as discovered 
by Science. The proofs of the Bible we will show you 
to be clear, simple, and convincing, while the truths they 
establish, like those of creation, are incomprehensible as 
the Godhead revealed. Only the Deity can understand 
the Deity. Inferior natures must bow in everlasting 
reverence before the mysteries of Him whose unveiled 
glories would yet more overpower feeble worshippers in 
this temple of his universe. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 77 



LECTURE VI. 

AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS OF* THE OLD 
TESTAMENT. 

ON a shelf of my library I perceive an English Bible. 
It contains the books of the canon of the Old and 
the New Testaments. But, ecclesiastically, what is a 
canon ? I examine and ascertain that canon is from the 
Greek word naivoov meaning ride, and was first used 
in the Scripture itself. St. Clement and St. Irenaeus, 
earliest among the ancient fathers, employed canon to 
denote the whole number of the sacred books supposed 
to possess a divine authority, and from them it passed 
into universal currency. 

In regard to my Bible I often hear used the words 
authentic, genuine and credible. What is authentic? 
What is genuine ? What is credible ? Have these words 
the same signification? I push my inquiries and discover 
that a book is authentic when written by the author 
whose name it bears. Or should the book be not a 
forgery, and the name of its author be lost, it may be 
distinguished as genuine. But without respect to its 
authorship, it is credible when it relates what is true. 

I then infer that a work may be authentic, and not 
credible, as the il Fairy Queen," which, written by 
Spenser, was yet a poetical allegory not intended to be 
believed. Relating facts under an assumed name the 
" Travels of Anacharsis " are credible but not authentic. 
The " Arabian Nights' Entertainments," composed of 



78 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

fictitious narratives, told by a feigned person, are neither 
authentic nor credible. But the " Life of Washington/' 
which bears the name of Irving, and records historic 
truth, is both authentic and credible. 

Whatever the work, sacred or profane, questions touch- 
ing its authenticity must be determined by virtually 
the same methods. I greatly admire the fiery eloquence 
of the oration against Catiline ascribed to Cicero. Was 
it indeed delivered by that distinguished Roman in 
the Senate Chamber of the Capitol ? I trace it from 
age o age. I find it lauded, quoted, expounded, tran- 
scribed, published back through centuries to the time of 
the orator himself. I read his own allusions in his let- 
ters to his friend Atticus. Moreover, it bears every mark 
of the country, the period, and of the genius of Cicero, 
and gave color to his whole subsequent career, which 
without it would be inexplicable. I am as certain that 
Cicero is the author of the oration, against Catiline as of 
any other fact in the universe. 

In regard to all other books, investigations may be 
more or less extensive, complicated and conclusive, but 
they must be by methods similar to those just described. 

I will return to the Bible on my shelf. An inquiry 
suggests itself. I wish to know whether it can be proved 
that the books of the Old Testament contained in that 
English version were in those Hebrew Scriptures ex- 
pounded and authorized by Jesus Christ. 

In answering this question I turn to the title-page. 
There I read these words: " The Holy Bible, containing 
the Old and New Testaments, translated out of the orig- 
inal tongues, and with the former translations diligently 
compared and revised." 

Following the suggestions of the title-page I discover 
that the Old Testament of my English Bible was trans- 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 79 

lated from the original Hebrew under the patronage and 
authority of James the First, King of Great Britain, and 
that it had some illustrious predecessors. Chiefly these 
were the Bishop's Bible, the Geneva Bible, Tyndale's 
Bible, Coverdale's Bible. But in all these translations 
the common source of the Old Testament was the He- 
brew Scripture used in every Jewish synagogue in the 
world. Side by side with any learned rabbi I might 
now prosecute my inquiries. 

Pushing my investigations I ascertain that there are 
now in existence nearly seven hundred manuscripts of 
the Hebrew Scriptures in various states of completeness 
— in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, in Russia, in England, 
in the Orient. But we will pass up the centuries to con- 
sider the 

MASORAH. 

After the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion 
of the Jews over the Roman Empire, schools were estab- 
lished for the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, whose ex- 
istence thus is proved. An academy at Tiberias became 
specially distinguished. Here the rabbis collected all 
the learning of centuries which could determine the true 
reading of the Old Testament text. Their work was 
called the Masorah, or Tradition. Its notes and criti- 
cisms relate to letters, vowels, points and accents. They 
even counted how often each letter occurred in the He- 
brew Scriptures. We thus perceive not only that the 
Old Testament existed in those early centuries but also 
that it was guarded and transmitted by those best qual- 
ified for the work. 

Toward the close of the second century Rabbi Judah 
completed the digest of oral law and traditions called the 

TALMUD. 

As the Masorah was intended to fix the true text, so 



80 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

the Talmud was intended to fix the true interpretation of 
the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. Quoting from them 
accurately and extensively, it becomes a witness to their 
existence. The Talmud consists of two parts. First 
there is the Mishna or text, and second, the Gemara 
or commentary. The traditions of the Talmud are 
ascribed by the Jews to early periods of their history. 
Some claimed that Moses received them on the mountain 
of the Law. However true or false such pretensions, the 
Talmud enables us to trace the Old Testament to the 
second century before Jesus Christ. 

We will not describe the Targums until we have 
descended again the stream of history to mention the 

HEXAPLA OF ORIGEN. 

He was the most learned of all the fathers. Indeed, in 
any age he would have been a marvel of erudition. 
Origen devoted twenty-eight years of his laborious life to 
collecting and collating manuscripts. Out of this long 
and learned toil grew his Hexapla, which was to be for all 
time a monument of proof in behalf of the Scriptures. 
This great work, begun in a.d. 231, was finished in a.d. 
26o,its name being derived from the Greek sS and an\oo^ y 
meaning six and fold. The Hexapla contained (1) The 
Hebrew Text, (2) A Text in which Greek letters were 
substituted for Hebrew, (3) The Version of Aquila, (4) 
The Version of Symmachus, (5) The Septuagint, (6) The 
Version of Theodotion. 

Here we may introduce 

JOSEPHUS. 

He was a contemporary of apostles. In his treatise 
against Apion this great Jewish writer mentions the sev- 
eral books of the Old Testament. His " Jewish An- 
tiquities " are largely compiled from the sacred writings. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 8 1 

PHILO, 

In the first century of our era, cites or names nearly all 
the books of the Old Testament, and about fifty years be- 
fore Jesus Christ we reach the 

TARGUMS. 

These are paraphrases of the various parts of the Old 
Testament in the East Aramaean dialect. When in the 
synagogue the Law was read in Hebrew, it was ren- 
dered into this Aramaeic, which after the captivity gradu- 
ally had become the language of the Jewish people. Out 
of this custom grew the ten Targums. Of these, two only 
need be mentioned. 

I. The Targum of Onkelos. He is supposed to have 
been a disciple of the celebrated Rabbi Hillel and to 
have lived about a half century before Christ. The work 
of Onkelos renders each Hebrew word accurately and is 
confined to the Pentateuch. 

II. The Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, also a disci- 
ple of Hillel. It treats of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and 
Kings, called the " Former Prophets," and of Isaiah, 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, with the twelve minor prophets, 
this whole second part being designated the "Latter 
Prophets." 

According to the universal tradition of the Jews, Ezra 
collected all the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, and 
thus more than five centuries before Christ completed the 
canon of the Old Testament. After the Babylonish cap- 
tivity synagogues were erected in every part of Judea, 
and indeed in all regions of the world where the Jews 
migrated. If we believe history, from the age of Ezra to 
this hour, on each Sabbath of the year, the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures have been read and expounded in the Hebrew syn- 
agogues. 

Beginning with our English Bible, we have traced the 



82 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Old Testament, through manuscript, and Masorah, and 
Talmud, and Hexapla, and Targum, incontestably to the 
time of Jesus Christ, and, in our own opinion, more than 
five centuries beyond our era. As the line of our argument 
has been directly through the Hebrew original, a Jewish 
rabbi would employ substantially the same proof, and he 
is probably the best witness to the canonicity of his own 
Scriptures. 

But on the shelf of my library I see another volume. 
I take it from its place and discover it to be in Latin. 
The title-page informs me that it is the 

VULGATE. 

My curiosity is excited, and I begin a new line of in- 
quiry. What is this Vulgate? I find that for centuries, 
and in every part of our world, it has been the sole stan- . 
dard for the Roman Catholic Church. In the sixteenth 
century a decree of the Council of Trent gave formal and 
final authority to what had been the usage of ages. Hear 
the words of the famous canon in regard to the Vulgate: 

u It shall be deemed authentic in the public readings 
of the Scriptures, in disputations, in preaching, and ex- 
pounding, and no one shall dare to reject it under any 
pretext whatever." 

The Vulgate received the approbation of Pope Gregory 
in the sixth century, and was made in the fourth under 
the patronage of Pope Damasus. Its author was the 
celebrated St. Jerome. His work was so remarkable and 
has exerted so wide an influence that I will pause to 
notice more especially this learned author. 

St. Jerome was born at Strido in Dalmatia. An early 
passion for rhetoric and philosophy led him to the courts 
and schools. The literature of pagan Rome exerted over 
him a fascination. In his dreams he was reproached for 
wishing to be a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT, 83 

After long and terrible struggles he devoted his life to 
the Holy Scriptures. At Chalcis a hermit in his solitary 
cell he learned Hebrew and Greek. Invited to Rome, 
he was induced by Pope Damasus to give himself to re- 
vise the old Italic version of the Bible. Afterwards he 
made the tour of Palestine, and in a monastery of Bethle- 
hem began his grand work. 

Thus by a second path of investigation in the middle 
of the fourth century we are brought to the Vulgate of 
St. Jerome, which contains in Latin the whole of the Old 
Testament, and is an irrefutable witness to its existence 
at that early period. But we have also seen that the 
Vulgate was based on the 

OLD ITALIC. 

At the beginning of the Christian era the Latin com- 
menced to supplant the Greek as an international lan- 
guage. Many translations of the Scriptures were made 
from Greek into Latin. Parts of separate versions be- 
came united. Marginal notes crept into the text. Diver- 
sity produced confusion. Gradually other translations 
were superseded by the superior fidelity and excellence 
of the Old Italic, which obtained universal circulation in 
the Latin Church until displaced by the greater merit of 
the Vulgate. The Old Testament was probably from the 
Septuagint, and translated in the early part of the second 
century. 

But in preparing the Vulgate, St. Jerome must have 
consulted not only this Old Italic but also the 

PESCHITO. 

This is in Syriac, and has a most venerable authority. 
It belongs to the last part of the first, or the first part of 
the second century. Both these versions presume also a 
Hebrew original older, as we have seen, than the time of 
Jesus Christ. 



84 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

I lift my eyes again to the shelf of my library and re- 
mark a volume larger than my Vulgate. I discover the 
title to be in Latin. This translated reads, " The Old 
Testament according to the Seventy Interpreters. ,, Here 
then I am confronted with the famous 

SEPTUAGINT. 

On examination I find that the text is Greek, and this 
starts me along a third line of inquiry to and beyond the 
period of our Saviour. As the Vulgate is the standard 
of the Occidental, so the Septuagint is the standard of 
the Oriental Church. I go back in the history of the 
world three centuries. I pass the period of the Reforma- 
tion. I traverse the middle ages. I travel beyond the 
time of Justinian. I pause in the reign of the great 
Constantine, who, in the first part of the fourth century, 
founded the capital of the Eastern empire, and built the 
^original Church of St. Sophia. As now in the cathedral 
of the Greek patriarch at Constantinople, so then in that 
first St. Sophia, the Septuagint furnished the Old Testa- 
ment lesson read by the priest to the people. It was in 
the Hexapla of Origen already described as formed in 
the middle of the third century. It was quoted by the 
fathers. It was quoted by the apostles. It was quoted 
by our Saviour. Before his time, for nearly three cen- 
turies, it was in the Jewish home, the Jewish school, the 
Jewish synagogue, in every part of our earth where 
Greek was the spoken language, and the Jewish people 
found a mart for trade, or a refuge from persecution. 

It is, therefore, most important to know the history of 
this Septuagint version. Strangely, the sword of Alex- 
ander prepared the way for this Greek translation of the 
Old Testament. His conquests in Asia and Africa, by 
the enlargement of the Greek empire, extended the use 
of the Greek language. Alexandria became the new cap- 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 85 

ital of Egypt, and under the patronage of the Ptolemies, 
a brilliant centre of commerce and learning. Hither in 
vast numbers crowded the Jews, who, since the Baby- 
lonish captivity, had been gradually losing command of 
their native Hebrew, understood at last only by their 
rabbis. Hence, in their homes and in their synagogues 
arose the necessity of a translation of their Scriptures 
into Greek. This was accomplished by the munificence 
of Ptolemy himself. The Septuagint was thus made nearly 
three centuries before Christ, in the isle of Pharos, near 
Alexandria, either by seventy-two Jews brought by the 
royal command from Palestine for the benefit of the royal 
library, or by seventy-two members of the Alexandrian 
Sanhedrim for the benefit of the Alexandrian Jews, or 
for the mingled purpose of promoting Greek learning and 
Hebrew convenience. Whatever the particular circum- 
stances of the translation, there is not a doubt as to its 
time. Here is a fixed and momentous fact in the history 
of the Old Testament. Nearly three centuries before our 
Saviour, the thirty-nine canonical books of our author- 
ized English version were translated from the Hebrew 
into the Greek, and in the Greek have been perpetuated 
and scattered over our world. We thus prove that the 
Old Testament existed, not only at the time of Jesus 
Christ, but hundreds of years previous to his birth. 

The Jews considered the sacred Oracles their peculiar 
trust from Jehovah. Guardianship of the Scriptures was 
their boast and glory. Never has the purity of any writ- 
ings been protected with such a zealous care. The books 
of Moses were deposited in the ark, and by command 
taught the households of the people. They were publicly 
read and expounded. A special copy was made for the 
king. So exact and reverential were the Jews that a dis- 
tinct order of men was consecrated to the work of tran- 



86 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

scribing the national oracles. Among the scribes those 
who copied the Scriptures performed no other labor, and 
were so devout that they would not write Jehovah, but 
substituted Adonai for the ineffable word. So fearful 
were they of disturbing the text that obvious errors were 
indicated in the margin. After the captivity the Scrip- 
tures were statedly read in the synagogues. We have 
thus an irresistible argument not only for the authen- 
ticity, but the purity of the Hebrew Scriptures. Corrup- 
tion was nearly impossible. No volume was ever sur- 
rounded by such guards and proofs as the Old Testament. 
Nor can we doubt that the Jews were best qualified to 
settle their own canon. It would seem safe to admit the 
books by them received, and not safe to acknowledge 
books by them rejected. 

We have seen how the purity of the text of the Old 
Testament was guarded. Forgery was less easy than 
corruption. Let us consider the Historical Books of the 
Old Testament. The Pentateuch contains the account 
of the beginning of the Jewish nation in the covenant 
with Abraham. It narrates the origin of circumcision, a 
rite afterwards enjoined by Moses on Joshua, and since 
observed in all parts of the Hebrew world. Moreover, 
the Pentateuch records the plagues of Egypt, the passage 
of the Red Sea, the announcement of the Law, the erec- 
tion of the tabernacle, the appointment of the Priesthood, 
and the apportionment of the land. Joshua describes the 
crossing of the Jordan, and the memorial at Gilgal, after 
which he gives an account of the possession by the Jews 
of Canaan. Both Moses and Joshua appeal to the nation 
as having seen and heard the facts recorded. The other 
books of the Old Testament continue the narration down 
through many centuries until the return from Babylon. 
As to Job, the Psalms, the Ecclesiastes, the Canticles, 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 87 

and also the Prophets with their burning denunciations 
of sin, and their terrible predictions of punishment, there 
could be few inducements for forgery. 

Suppose an adventurer had attempted to impose fabri- 
cated accounts, what would the Jews have said? Hear 
the inevitable answer: 

" This is new to us. We never heard of Abraham and 
circumcision. We never witnessed these plagues, this 
passage of the sea, this promulgation of the Law, these 
wonders of the wilderness, and this conquest and division 
of Canaan, No records and no memorials of such events 
have been seen by us, or transmitted by our fathers." 

You perceive how unanswerable these objections. No 
such forged accounts of their origin, their institutions and 
their history could be imposed on any nation. Imagine such 
an attempt upon ourselves! Could we be persuaded to 
receive into our national records narrations of our colo- 
nial and revolutionary times fabricated and false? Would 
we ever give credence to accounts of settlements never 
made, treaties never promulgated, battles never fought, 
defeats never experienced, victories never won, compro- 
mises ? and adjustments, and confederacies which never 
existed, and of a constitution never created? Could we 
be induced to believe that our fathers were actors in mere 
imaginary events, and had left records and memorials 
of which we had not heard before? This could never be! 
And if we could not be deceived by such forged histories, 
neither could the Jews. These are the oldest and the 
most famous people in existence, and the most widely 
scattered over the world. They are united in an organ- 
ization with rites and ceremonies practiced for ages. For 
the origin and history of their national institutions they 
turn to the Scriptures. Shall we not receive their own 
testimony? Reject it, and we are presented with the 



88 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

spectacle of a nation most renowned for its antiquity, its 
literature, its customs, and its influence, and yet destitute 
of an authentic history. 

Thus from three starting-points in the same library — 
the English Version, the Vulgate Version, and the Sep* 
tuagint Version — we have traced the Old Testament 
beyond the birth of Jesus Christ. To this evidence might 
have been added proofs from quotations, from catalogues, 
from commentaries, from readings, from manuscripts, 
from heretic and from infidel, and also from many inci- 
dental sources. But this would have been unnecessary 
to our present argument. All that we now wish to show 
is that the Old Testament existed in the time of our 
Saviour. Beyond this we would be forced to enter the 
mists of the bewildering regions of the Higher Criticism. 
Our very object in the publication of these Lectures is to 
see if there is not some ascertainable basis of rational 
faith without embarking on that wild sea of restless doubt 
and reckless speculation where the voyage so often ter- 
minates in shipwreck and despair. 

In our own view argument abundantly confirms the 
Hebrew belief in regard to the age, the authorship, and 
the canonicity of the Hebrew Scriptures, with some wise, 
conservative and learned suggestions of Christian Schol- 
arship. But should we aspire to overthrow the Higher 
Criticism, it would be by arraying it against itself. If 
the erudition is vast, the theories are endless. Often the 
authors have the industry and ingenuity of spiders, and 
rival those insects in the extreme thinness and devious 
entanglements of their inextricable webs. Should the 
comparison be with works of human architects, the resem- 
blance would be to aspiring but slender structures rising 
through mists towards kindred clouds from the sandiest 
foundations. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 89 

We have said that the theories of the Higher Criticism 
are innumerable. They are also usually antagonistic. 
Each is infallibly right, and each is opposed to a score, 
perhaps a hundred, rival opinions. For one consistent 
scheme, supported by Jewish tradition and rabbinical 
learning, by the authority of the universal Church, by 
long lines of eminent scholars Catholic and Protestant, 
we are asked to accept these ever multiplying speculations 
swarming forth with almost periodic abundance, opposed 
to each other, and only united in their zeal against those 
venerable views which they so violently assault. There 
could be no greater demand on human credulity. This 
Higher Criticism resembles the marine torpedo — at once 
destructive and self-destructive. It may injure others; 
it must explode itself. Its expounders remind us of blind 
giants, furious against a common foe, yet in the bewilder- 
ment of darkness hewing each other and filling their own 
encampment with wounds, disfigurement and death. If 
we do not admire the discordant blasts of the warriors 
themselves, we are still less edified with the toy-trumpets 
of their imitators. 



go EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 



LECTURE VII. 

A UTHENTICITY OF THE EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

WE include, for convenience, the four Gospels and 
the Book of the Acts under the title of the 
Evangelical Histories. The proofs of their authenticity- 
apply to the other parts of the New Testament, requir- 
ing, however, some explanations in regard to several 
Epistles and the Revelations, which were received later 
into the canon. To avoid interruption in our argument 
we confine ourselves to the Evangelical Histories. These, 
moreover, are of transcendent importance. The Gospels, 
especially should stand by themselves. They claim to 
fulfil the grand Messianic prophecies of the Old Testa- 
ment', and they furnish those Messianic narratives which 
are the very life of the Epistles of the New Testament. 
And, as we shall see, on the Evangelical Histories must be 
based the supreme and sufficient argument for Christianity. 
Here then we reach a question of prime importance: 
What are the proofs of the authenticity of the Evan- 
gelical Histories ? 
Let us begin with the 

MANUSCRIPTS. 

Of these there are hundreds in different languages. 
Usually they are not earlier than the tenth century. It 
will only be necessary for our purpose to describe a few 
much more ancient, and which are also the most famous 
of the number. 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 9 1 

First I will mention the 

CODEX EPHREMI. 

This is a manuscript in vellum in the library of Paris, 
and most probably of the sixth century. The first part 
contains several Greek works of Ephraim the Syrian, 
and hence the name of the codex. It is a rescrifitus, hav- 
ing most probably been written over the Septuagint, and 
is an Alexandrian Rescension of the New Testament in 
the Greek language of great purity. Most likely it is 
of Egyptian origin. Here, then, in the sixth century 
we find all the Evangelical Histories. 

Perhaps one hundred years earlier is the 

CODEX CANTABRIGIENSIS. 

This manuscript is in the library of the University of 
Cambridge, and contains the Evangelical Histories in 
Greek and in Latin It was presented in 1581 by The- 
odore Beza, having been found in the monastery of St. 
Irenaeus in Lyons. 

Next we will consider the 

CODEX ALEXANDRINUS. 

It is in four folio volumes. The first three contain 
the Old Testament with the Apocryphal books, and the 
fourth has the New Testament together with the Epistle 
of St. Clement. All are in the Greek. The Alexan- 
drinus was probably written in the fifth century, but the 
exact time cannot now be ascertained. Its great anti- 
quity is universally conceded. This venerable codex 
was brought from Alexandria in 1628 by Cyrillus Lu- 
caris, Patriarch of Constantinople, and presented to 
Charles the First through Sir Thomas Rowe, the English 
ambassador. In 1753 it was deposited in the British 
Museum where it is now preserved. 

In about the same age we have the 



92 EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

CODEX VATICANUS. 

This contained originally the entire Bible in Greek, 
including the Old and New Testaments. Many parts in 
both are wanting. But the Evangelical Histories are 
complete. It has usually been assigned to the fifth cen- 
tury, but influenced by many agreements with the Codex 
Sinaiticus, scholars now incline to believe that the Vati- 
canus was made by the imperial command of the great 
Constantine. This invaluable manuscript is in the Vati- 
can Library at Rome. 

Most probably of the same date is the 

CODEX SINAITICUS. 

It is in Greek, and is assigned to the first part of the 
fourth century. There is strong proof that it is one of 
the fifty copies ordered by the Emperor Constantine, and 
made under the superintendence of Eusebius, Bishop of 
Csesarea. It contains the Old and New Testaments, the 
latter being perfect. The Codex Sinaiticus was dis- 
covered by Tischendorf in 1869 in the convent of Saint 
Catherine, on Mount Sinai, and is in the imperial library 
of St. Petersburg. 

We have traced the Evangelical Histories by indubi- 
table evidence to the fourth century. By several lines of 
proof we can connect them with the apostolic times. 

After the manuscripts come the 

CATALOGUES. 

Rufinus, Presbyter of Aquileia, in the latter part of the 
fourth century, left a catalogue of the books of the Old 
and New Testaments, adding, " These are the volumes 
which the fathers included in the canon, and out of 
which they would have us prove the doctrine of the 
faith." 

St. Augustine, the most celebrated of the fathers as a 
theologian, about the same time in Africa published a 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 93 

list enumerating our own books of the canon, and includ- 
ing no others. 

St. Jerome, author of the Vulgate, and eminent for his 
learning, also about the middle of the fourth century, 
supplied a catalogue similar to those of Augustine and 
Rufinus, only with the intimation of a doubt in regard to 
the Revelations. 

Philostratus, Bishop of Brescia, in the year 380 gives 
a catalogue also identical with our own, except that it 
omits the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Book of 
Revelation, doubted by some, but by him esteemed 
canonical. 

Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, in the 
same year enumerates the books of the New Testament, 
except the Revelations, which, however, he quoted in 
some of his other works. The Council of Laodicea, 
about the year 350, issued a catalogue agreeing with our 
own, except in the omission of the Revelations. 

Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, in the beginning of the 
fourth century published a catalogue embracing our 
present books, mentioning, however, that the Epistle of 
St. James, the Second of St. Peter, the Third of St. John, 
and the Revelations, while questioned by some, were yet 
generally received, and in his opinion properly. Cyril, 
Bishop of Jerusalem, made a catalogue of the Scriptural 
writings like our own, except in the omission of the 
Revelations. 

Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and the great adver- 
sary of Arius, about three centuries after the death of 
Christ, furnished a catalogue of the books of the New 
Testament, which are precisely those we now esteem 
canonical. 

Origen, the most learned of all the fathers, in the 
earlier part of the third century, made the first com- 



94 EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

plete transmitted catalogue. It agrees with our present 
canon, and of course includes the Evangelical Histories. 

Most probably nearly a century before Origen, and 
earliest of all catalogues, is the Muratorian Fragment, 
discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan in a manu- 
script of the seventh or eighth century. It came from 
the Monastery of Columbari at Boblio. Muratori, whose 
name it bears, published it about 1740 in his Antiquitates 
Italicae. Although not mentioned, the Gospel of St. 
Matthew evidently stood first in the canon. The Frag- 
ment commences with a reference to the Gospel of St. 
Mark; St. Luke is third in order, and fourth follows St. 
John. The Book of Acts is mentioned as containing a 
record by St. Luke " of those acts of all the apostles 
which fell under his own notice. 5 ' 

Thus, a little after the middle of the second century we 
have in the Muratorian Fragment proof of the existence 
of the Evangelical Histories. 

Nor must we forget the evidence furnished by the 

COMMENTARIES. 

Of these there w r ere various kinds on different books 
of the New Testament. In the fourth century there 
were fourteen expositions. Julius Africanus, Ammonius 
and Origen wrote epistles, harmonies and commentaries 
on the sacred books. Eusebius in the year 300 says, 
" There remain divers monuments of the laudable indus- 
try of those ancient ecclesiastical men, besides treatises c f 
many others whose names we have not been able to learn, 
orthodox and ecclesiastical men, as the interpretation of 
the divine Scriptures given by each of them shows. ,, 

Tatian in the year 170 began the list of expository 
writers, and was followed by Pantaenus, a man of distin- 
guished learning, and the illustrious Clement of Alexan- 
dria. 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 95 

Testimony is also supplied by 

HERETICS. 

Numerous wild and fanatical sects arose in the early 
ages of the Church. These assaulted the orthodox faith, 
and were answered in writings which now compose a 
learned and extensive literature. Both parties appealed 
constantly to the Scriptures as a common standard, and 
especially to the Evangelical Histories, thus furnishing 
undesignedly incidental, but incontestable evidence to 
their authenticity. 

Moreover, the argument is fortified by the works of 

INFIDELS. 

Julian the Apostate, about three centuries after the 
publication of the Evangelical Histories, noticed by name 
St. Matthew, St. Luke and St. John, and also events re- 
corded in the Acts of the Apostles. Porphyry, a century 
before Julian, made his attack on Christianity. He urges 
objections against passages in St. Matthew, St. Mark and 
St. John, and also in the Acts of the Apostles composed 
by St. Luke, thus embracing in his opposition each of the 
writers of the Evangelical Histories, and establishing the 
existence and the works of all as previous to his own times. 

Celsus, about one hundred years after the publication 
of the Evangelical Histories, in an effort to overthrow 
their authority, has perpetuated indubitable testimony to 
their authenticity. He says, <c I could say many things 
concerning the affairs of Jesus, and different from those 
written by the disciples of Jesus." He accuses Chris- 
tians of altering their Gospels, takes notice of their gene- 
alogies and assails their precepts. 

We derive another proof of the authenticity of the 
Evangelical Histories from the 

PUBLIC READINGS. 

Augustine says, " The canonical books of Scripture 



96 EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

being read everywhere, the miracles therein recorded are 
well known to all the people." 

Cyprian tells us, " Nothing can be more fit than that 
he who has made a glorious confession of the Lord should 
read publicly in the church — that he who has shown him- 
self willing to die a martyr should read the Gospel of 
Christ by which martyrs are made. " 

Origen bears witness, u Thus we do when the Scrip- 
tures are read in the church, and when the discourse for 
explanation is delivered to the people." 

Tertullian, before Origen, had testified, u We come to- 
gether to recollect the Divine Scriptures; we nourish our 
faith, rouse our hope, confirm our trust by the sacred 
Word." 

Justin Martyr, one hundred and forty years after our 
Saviour, wrote, " The memoirs of the Apostles " — called 
by him in other places Gospels — " or the writings of the 
Prophets are read according as the time allows. When 
the reader has ended, the President makes a discourse 
exhorting to excellent things." 

Another species of proof deserves our attention. 
Irenseus, Bishop of Lyons, before the close of the second 
century epitomizes Christianity in a 

CREED. 

This is interesting as the earliest authenticated attempt 
to summarize the essential truths of the Evangelical His- 
tories, and also as showing how long and how widely 
these must have been disseminated. Irenaeus says: 

" The Church, though dispersed throughout all the 
world, hath received from the Apostles, and their dis- 
ciples, this faith in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker 
of Heaven and Earth, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son 
of God, who became incarnate for our Salvation; and in 
the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through Prophets the dis- 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES, 97 

pensation of God, and the advents, and the birth from a 
virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the 
dead, and the ascension into Heaven, in the flesh of the 
beloved Jesus, our Lord, and His future manifestation 
from Heaven in the glory of the Father, to gather all 
things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole 
human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and 
God and Saviour and King, according to the will of the in- 
visible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven 
and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that 
every tongue should confess Him, and that He should 
execute just judgment towards all." 

The Creed of Melito, a contemporary of Irenaeus, 
shows also how his age had already become saturated with 
the facts of the Evangelical Histories. 

si We have made collections from the Law and the 
Prophets relative to those things which have been de- 
clared respecting our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may 
prove to your love that He is perfect Reason — the Word 
of God; who was begotten before the Light; who was 
the fashioner of man; who was all in all; who among the 
Patriarchs was Patriarch; who in the Law was the Law; 
among the Priests, Chief Priest; among Kings, Governor; 
among prophets, the Prophet; among angles, the Arch- 
angel; in the voice, the Word; among spirits, Spirit; in 
the Father, the Son; in God, God; the King forever and 
ever. For this was He who was Pilot to Noah; who 
conducted Abraham; who was bound with Isaac; who 
was exile with Jacob; who was sold with Joseph; who 
was captain with Moses; who was the Director of the in- 
heritance with Jesus the Son of Men; who in David and 
the Prophets foretold his own sufferings; who was incar- 
nate in the Virgin; who was born at Bethlehem; who was 
wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger; who was 



98 EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

seen of shepherds; who was glorified of angles ; who was 
worshipped by Magi; who was pointed out by John; 
who assembled the Apostles; who preached the King- 
dom; who healed the maimed; who gave sight to the 
blind; who raised the dead; who appeared in the 
Temple; who was believed on by the people; who was 
betrayed by Judas; who was laid hold on by the Priests; 
who was condemned by Pilate; who was pierced in the 
flesh; who was hanged on the tree; who was buried in the 
earth; who rose from the dead; who appeared unto the 
Apostles; who ascended into Heaven; who sitteth on the 
right hand of the Father; who is the Rest of those that 
are departed — God who is of God, the Son who is of the 
Father, Jesus Christ, the King forever and ever, Amen!" 
In the previous lecture on the authenticity of the Old 
Testament we described the 

VERSIONS. 

These also bear testimony to the Evangelical Histo- 
ries, which are contained in the Vulgate of the fourth 
century, and the Old Italic, and Peschito of the earlier 
part of the second century after the birth of our Saviour. 

But no proof of the authenticity of the Evangelical 
Histories is so cogent, so palpable and so unanswerable 
as that supplied by the Fathers of the Church in their 
innumerable 

QUOTATIONS. 

Beginning a few years after our Saviour we find these 
invaluable extracts from the Scriptures. We now con- 
fine our remarks especially to the Evangelical Histories. 
The quotations are seldom in the precise' words and 
order of the original. Such a method was in accord- 
ance with the custom of the times. In the same in- 
formal way passages were taken from the Old Testament, 
not only by Greek and Latin Fathers but even by our 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES, 99 

Saviour and His Apostles. To suppose these quotations 
from some perished originals is a gratuitous assertion 
without one trace of proof. We recognize them as from 
our own familiar Evangelical Histories. Nor will the 
Higher Criticism disturb the conclusion of our common 
sense. It has run its circle and perished in the counter- 
currents of its own antagonisms. Acids and alkalies of 
hostile theories have neutralized each other. Opposing 
electrical forces have adjusted themselves into an equi- 
librium. The sky is cleared by its own violence, and 
we may once more discern plain truth by plain reason. 
St. Clement, about fifty years after the death of our Sa- 
viour, in his two brief Epistles quotes St. Matthew nine 
times, St. Luke four times and the Acts once. St. Bar- 
nabas quotes St. Matthew twice, St. Mark once and St. 
John once. St. Ignatius in his acknowledged epistles 
quotes St. Matthew nineteen times, St. Luke seven times, 
St. John twenty-nine times and the Acts five times. In 
the year 107 he suffered martyrdom at Rome. 

St. Polycarp, who wrote to the Philippians in the first 
part of the second century, quotes St. Matthew seven 
times, St. Luke once and the Acts once. 

But the force of the argument can only be realized 
by extracts from these venerable authors, called Apos- 
tolic Fathers because they had lived in the Apostolic 
times. Some of them were certainly contemporaries of 
St. John. 

St. Clement quotes evidently from St. Matthew where 
he says, " Be merciful that ye may obtain mercy ; for- 
give that it may be forgiven you ; as ye do it shall be 
done unto you ; as ye judge so shall ye be judged ; as 
ye are kind so kindness shall be shewn unto you ; with 
what measure ye mete with the same it shall be measured 
to you.' , 



IOO EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

St. Barnabas precedes a quotation from St. Matthew 
by saying, " It is written," " Many are called, but few 
are chosen." He has also words contained in each of 
the first three Gospels, " He came not to call the right- 
eous but sinners to repentance," 

St. Ignatius could supply many quotations from the 
Evangelical Histories. The books from which the fol- 
lowing extracts are taken will be obvious to all readers 
of the New Testament: " For the tree is known by its 
fruit. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the 
whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and 
three nights in the heart of the earth. For there are 
many wolves in sheep's clothing. Be ye perfect as also 
your Father in Heaven is perfect. For a spirit hath not 
flesh and bones as ye see Me have. Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself. I am the 
way and the life. I have glorified Thee upon the earth ; 
I have finished the work Thou gavest me. The word 
was made flesh. I can of mine own self do nothing. 
Father forgive them ; they know not what they do. 
Watch ye and be sober." "The disciples were called 
Christians at Antioch. It is hard to kick against the 
pricks." Paul is called "a chosen vessel." "This 
same Jesus who is taken from you into Heaven shall 
so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into 
Heaven." 

St. Polycarp affords the following : " Who raised up 
from the dead, having loosed the bands of the grave. 
The spirit truly is willing but the flesh is weak. Judge 
not that ye be not judged. Blessed are the poor and 
those that are persecuted for righteousness sake, for 
theirs is the Kingdom of God." 

After the Apostolic Fathers, quotations of the eccle- 
siastical writers are so numerous that we could restore 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. IOI 

the substance of the Scriptures should every copy in the 
world be obliterated. 

Remember that Clement and Ignatius were contempo- 
raries of St. John, and Polycarp his disciple. This con- 
nects the Apostolic Fathers with the Apostolic Age. 

But tracing the Evangelical Histories from the two 
hundred translations of our times scattered over our 
world, through manuscripts, and catalogues, and read- 
ings, and creeds, and versions and quotations, to the ear- 
liest Christian writers, by four additional links we com- 
plete the long chain of evidence and bind it forever to 
the authorship which has been transmitted through the 
ages by the Universal Church. 

We will mention first the testimony of 

EUSEBIUS AND PAPIAS. 

The former was the learned Bishop of Csesarea, and an 
intimate friend of the Great Constantine. His Ecclesi- 
astical History is one of the most interesting monuments 
of his times. It was written before 325, the year of the 
Nicene Council. 

Eusebius has preserved a most remarkable extract from 
Papias, who said: 

" For I have never like many delighted to hear those 
that tell many things, but those that teach the truth, neither 
those that record foreign precepts, but those that are 
given by the Lord to our faith and that came from the 
truth itself. But if I met with any one who had been a 
follower of the elders anywhere, I made it a point to 
inquire what were the declarations of the elders. What 
was said by Andrew, Peter, or Philip. What by Thomas, 
James, John, Matthew, or any other disciple of the 
Lord." 

Here was Papias who saw and heard those who knew 
the Apostles of Jesus Christ. He had conversed with 



102 EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 

those claiming to be acquainted with the very authors of 
Evangelical Histories. With such opportunities of infor- 
mation in regard to the original writers, what does Papias 
say? Hear his testimony: 

" Matthew composed his history in the Hebrew dialect 
and every one translated it as he was able. Mark being 
the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he recorded he wrote 
with great accuracy, but not, however, in the order in 
which it was spoken or done by our Lord, but as before 
said, he was in company with Peter, who gave him in- 
struction as was necessary." 

But it is urged that Papias omits to mention the Gos- 
pels of St. Luke and St. John. Through 

IREN^US AND POLYCARP 

We carry the chain of evidence to the writers of all the 
Gospels. 

Of his opportunities for knowledge Irenaeus testifies: 

" But Polycarp also was not only instructed by Apos- 
tles and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but 
was also by Apostles in Asia appointed bishop of the 
Church of Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, 
for he tarried a very long time, and when a very old man 
gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom departed 
this life, having always taught the things he had heard 
from the Apostles, and which the Church has handed 
down and which alone are true/' 

Thus Polycarp, who had heard the Apostles, instructed 
Irenaeus, and Irenaeus must hence surely know who wrote 
those Evangelical Histories he himself quoted and ex- 
pounded and considered the very source and life of his 
faith. But Irenaeus ascribes the Gospels to the authors 
whose names they now bear. Hear his words: 

"John relates His original, effectual and glorious 
generation from the Father, thus declaring: In the be- 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. 103 

ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God 
and the Word was God. Luke taking up his priestly 
character commenced with Zacharias the priest offering 
sacrifice to God. Matthew again relates His generation 
as a man, saying: The Book of the generations of Jesus, 
the son of David, the son of Abraham. Mark, on the 
other hand, commences with the prophetical spirit com- 
ing from on high on men, saying: The beginning of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Esaias the 
Prophet." 

But in addition to this unanswerable cumulative evi- 
dence it is certain that the Gospels and the Acts could 
only have been written within a brief period after the 
death of Jesus Christ. The conquests of Alexander had 
diffused the Greek language, and the conquests of Pompey 
had diffused the Latin language among the Jews, while 
their spoken language after the captivity was the Ara- 
maeic, a corruption of the Hebrew with the Chaldee. The 
three languages over the Cross were pictures of the na- 
tion. They sprang from the condition of the Jews, 
represented that condition, and in that condition only 
were possible. And thus, also, with the Evangelical His- 
tories. These are filled with allusions to the circum- 
stances of the country as they existed in the times of the 
Apostles, and which were wholly changed a few years 
after the destruction of the temple and the desolation of 
the country by the Romans. How the words centurion, 
and prator, and proconsul, and Ccesar, and Augustus 
indicate a Latin domination! The Evangelical Histories 
are in Greek, yet not in classic Greek, but in just such a 
Judaized Greek as would have been written in those 
times and by those authors, and could have been writ- 
ten in no other times and by no other authors. 
Words are constantly used from the Aramaeic, or daily 



104 EVANGELICAL HISTORIES, 

dialect of the people. Everywhere are visible traces of 
the three nationalities which gave character to Judea. 
A century after the ruin of city and temple, the style of 
the Gospels and the Acts would have been impossible, 
and all the researches and explorations of our times, in 
the minutest circumstances confirm the authenticity of 
these five most wonderful books of the Scriptures. 

From manuscript, from catalogue, from commentary, 
from lectionary, from version, from creed, from heretic 
and from infidel, from particular authors, from incidental 
facts we have drawn our arguments. And there is no con- 
tradictory proof deserving consideration. Like rays of 
light all these lines of evidence converge towards the 
authenticity of the Evangelical Histories. Nothing by 
human reason can be more surely established. 

One other consideration crowns our subject. The 
Church has extended herself over the world. She has 
her Scriptures, her sacraments, her ministrations, her 
observances. Her existence is the most influential fact in 
the history of man. Amid all the centuries of strife that 
have filled our earth with blood and flame and death, the 
Church has deepened and widened her sway over humanity. 
At this hour she is the most potent force in our boasted 
maturity of civilization. And there is promise of vigorous 
and dominant power over all the future of our race. 
Could such an institution be without a history ? Shall she 
have no knowledge of her own origin ? Shall she possess 
no record of the rise of her own doctrines and obser- 
vances? To the Evangelical Histories she refers us for the 
narrative of her birth, her growth and her authority. She 
knows no other and there is no other. Her writers and 
her councils, representing the best learning of the world, 
from the beginning of Christianity ascribed the Evangeli- 
cal Histories to their present reputed authors. In addition 



EVANGELICAL HISTORIES. I05 

to all the other proofs we have advanced, the Church is 
thus a perpetual witness to the authenticity of the five fun- 
damental books on which rest her faith and authority, and 
in support of no other volumes except the Scriptures has 
there ever been such an array of cumulative and invinci- 
ble evidence. 



I 06 SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 



LECTURE VIIL 

SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 

BY Supernatural Evidence we mean a direct inter- 
position of the Deity intended to attest his Reve- 
lations. But Science urges that this is impossible. She 
establishes the reign of Law. Phenomena of the universe 
to her seem bound together in unbroken succession. 
Indeed, Science only recognizes this invariable sequence, 
leaving to Philosophy discussions about the relations of 
cause and effect. Induction is her province, and it is 
not wonderful that she regards with suspicion the intru- 
sion of the Supernatural into that rigid order which she 
is always observing, studying, and confirming. And 
within just limits the jealousy of Science is right. Unless 
convincingly attested no man should credit a display of 
Omnipotence in the Miracle, and of Omniscience in the 
Prophecy. 

Sometimes by what seem weak concessions the advo- 
cates of the Scripture would soften the oppositions of 
Science. It is said apologetically that the supernatural 
is not necessarily a violation of the order of nature, but 
that it may invisibly direct the order of nature for its own 
purposes. Gravitation draws to the earth a stone. I 
interpose my hand, and arrest its fall. I do not violate 
the law of gravity. It is only counteracted by the law 
of my superior physical force. Man, the mouse, the 
wren, even the fly are continually nullifying and conquer- 
ing the attraction of the globe of the earth. Indeed, in 



S U PERN A TURAL E VIDENCE. I CJ 

the same way to mind and muscle we owe all our tri- 
umphs over nature, marvellous to a barbarian as miracles 
to a philosopher. Hence it is argued, as man sets aside 
a lower law by a higher law without the violation of law, 
so may the Deity in supernatural attestations of revela- 
tion. And this is undeniable. The Almighty Power 
may always thus work. Yet such an explanation has no 
force as an argument. It does not touch the true point 
of inquiry. The question is not how the supernatural is 
exerted, but is the supernatural exerted. In our proof 
we deal with the fact, and not with the mode. We do not 
inquire whether the laws of nature have been controlled, 
or suspended, or violated, but whether a miracle has been 
proved by the testimony of credible witnesses. 

Divergences arise from differing views in regard to the 
Deity. By denying a God, Atheism stops the inquiry. 
The old Deism reached the same result by asserting that 
God made the universe, and having wound his vast 
machine, left it without his superintendence to be moved 
by its original impulse. Pantheism, confounding God 
and the universe, and matter with spirit, affirms in nature 
one monotonous and everlasting succession. The funda- 
mental principle in each makes supernatural evidence 
incredible. With Atheist, Deist, and Pantheist, logically, 
there can be no argument on the subject of miracle and 
prophecy. Their premises contain their conclusion, and 
in the definition of each is involved a denial of the possi- 
bility of the supernatural. 

On the contrary, let me believe in the existence and 
perfection of an infinite Personal Creator! Let me be 
convinced that the universe was made by Him, and is an 
expression of His love, His wisdom and His power! Let 
me admit that always He is in all its parts to supply its 
force, to ordain its law, and direct it to the accomplish- 



108 SUPERNATURAL EVIDENCE. 

ment of His own everlasting plans ! Every difficulty 
vanishes. Nothing more natural and reasonable than that 
a Personal Creator infinite in His power and perfection 
should interpose with a beneficent scheme for the present 
and eternal happiness of His feeble and suffering creatures. 
How He may confer His favor I may not suggest. In- 
deed I prefer leaving all to His own sovereignty. Be- 
lieving in such a God the supernatural is credible, and 
not believing in such a God the supernatural will seem 
absurd. It will be henceforth presumed that our former 
arguments have been sufficient to prove such a God the 
cause of the universe. 

But permit me to pass from these general observations, 
'and to consider the specific objections urged against the 
miracles and the prophecies of the Scriptures. 

I will begin with the celebrated argument of Mr. 
Hume, which has been abridged as follows : 

" Our belief in any fact from the testimony of an eye- 
witness is derived from no other principle than our 
experience in the veracity of human testimony. If the 
fact attested be miraculous there arises a contest of two 
opposite experiences, or proof against proof. Now a 
miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm 
and unalterable experience has established these laws, 
the proof against a miracle from the nature of the fact is 
as complete as any argument from experience can possi- 
bly be imagined, and if so, it is an undeniable consequence 
that it cannot be surmounted by any proof whatever 
derived from human testimony." 

Mr. Hume ingeniously places in one scale the fact 
that men falsify, and in the other scale the fact that, in 
our experience nature is unchangeable, and turns the bal- 
ance in favor of the impossibility of establishing a miracle 
by witnesses. 



SUPEKNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 1 09 

But observe the foundation of the argument! Mr. 
Hume asserts that experience has proved the invariabil- 
ity of the order of nature. Whose experience? Does he 
mean his own experience, the experience of all who may 
read his essay, of every man of his own generation ? 
Conceded! Does he mean the experience of centuries 
preceding his own age? Conceded! Does he mean the 
experience of men one hundred years after the death of 
Christ ? Still conceded! Or does he mean the experience 
of the apostolic witnesses who testify to the resurrection 
of their Master? This is the precise fact in dispute. The 
very question is, did witnesses in the time of Jesus see His 
miracles, behold Him after His resurrection and look on 
Him ascending into Heaven? Mr. Hume asserts what 
he should prove. In plain language, he begs the question. 

Besides, as has been well urged, he makes experience 
synonymous with inexperience. In a trial for murder a 
thousand witnesses might swear that they did not see the 
accused stab the deceased. But they were not present 
and could not behold the assassination. All the members 
of the human family might have been absent from the 
scene but one, and yet the experience of that one would 
outweigh the inexperience of the rest of earth's millions. 

Only a few of mankind could possibly witness any super- 
natural attestation. Manifested to all, the supernatural 
would have no more force than the natural. Only in- 
frequency can give value to miracles. The question is, 
can we believe the few witnesses who testify to the facts ? 

The application of Mr. Hume's argument leads to ab- 
surd results. A few centuries since no man believed that 
our earth turned on her axis and revolved about the sun. 
The eye testified against the truth. When Copernicus 
announced his system, it was, in Mr. Hume's sense, op- 
posed to the experience of the whole world. Yet the ar- 



I IO SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 

guments of reason overcame the testimony of sight. But 
had Mr. Hume's speculations been accepted, the system 
of Copernicus could never have gained a believer against, 
what he terms, the experience of mankind through all the 
ages of human history. The argument is self-destructive. 
It would sweep away, not only Revealed Religion, but 
Inductive Science, and keep our race in the childhood 
of perpetual barbarism. Every savage could urge his 
inexperience as a reason for his disbelief, and prove him- 
self as wise as our prince of philosophers. 

Strauss suggested a theory which has none of the in- 
genuity of Hume. He held that the Evangelical His- 
tories, several centuries after Christ, shaped themselves 
from the traditional myths of the Church into records of 
miracles so as more and more to conform the career of 
the supposed Messiah to the prophetic descriptions of 
the Old Testament. Such a theory can be tested only 
by facts. By arguments which to me seem overwhelm- 
ing it has been shown that the Evangelical Histories, be- 
fore the close of the first century, were composed by their 
reputed writers, and this established, destroys the very 
foundations of the theory of Strauss. Rejecting the 
proofs adduced, my Reason could be convinced of noth- 
ing, and would sink into the gloom of universal doubt. 
Indeed, the German Higher Criticism, as it complacently 
styles itself, by its spirit, and methods, like the sophism 
of Hume, leading inevitably to the overthrow of all be- 
lief, destroys not only philosophy, but the possibility of 
philosophy. 

Dr. Carpenter, of the University of London, has ex- 
panded an argument foreshadowed in his " Mental Physi- 
ology." To the facts in Abercrombie he has added some 
striking cases of sense-illusion. Persons of superior 
shrewdness and intelligence, on the testimony of eye and 



SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 1 1 1 

ear, with the utmost assurance have reported things after- 
wards proven never to have occurred. Multitudes have 
been misled into a belief of sights and sounds which ex- 
isted only in imagination. Indeed, the senses of men 
are liable to daily impositions. Now it is urged that in 
the same way the miracles of the Bible were deceits 
practiced on the witnesses by themselves. But if the ar- 
gument have force it must apply to every thing in life, 
and shake confidence in whatever the senses testify. 
Are not the Physical Sciences founded on the very evi- 
dence this theory would discredit ? Without observation 
by the senses could either Chemistry, or Geology, or As- 
tronomy have existed? Disbelieve what your eye sees 
through the telescope, and where will be your Science of 
the Heavens ? Distrust your ear, and your ringer, and the 
telegraph is an unmeaning toy. The argument of Dr. 
Carpenter would close his laboratory, and make impos- 
sible his profession, and sweep away the very basis of the 
splendid superstructure of our Modern Science. 

Despite all theories, practically the senses are reliable. 
They are trusted by the very men who would shake faith 
in their testimony. We learn to discriminate. It is dis- 
covered that illusions and delusions are abnormal, spring- 
ing from fear, from fancy, from disease, from derange- 
ment. One sense corrects another, and over all Reason 
stands sentinel. Mistakes seldom occur, and on the 
testimony of their senses men daily invest their money, 
and trust their lives. 

The feebleness of the argument is best seen when 
applied to the miracles of the Bible. We will select those 
relating to the children of Israel in their flight from 
Egypt and journey through the wilderness. Numbering 
about two millions they were the witnesses to whom 
Moses constantly appeals. This multitude thought they 



1 1 2 SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 

saw the Nile turned into blood when it was always water; 
thought they saw the air filled with locusts, and the earth 
covered with vermin when neither had been ever infested; 
thought that fire fell from heaven, and cattle were killed 
and infants destroyed, and that for three days Egypt was 
in sunless gloom, whereas the whole was a mere illusion. 
A nation persuaded itself that it had travelled for miles 
on the bottom of the sea between walls of water, and had 
sung in triumph on the other side, when not a man had 
gone through the deep, and not a note of exultation had 
been uttered. We are asked to believe that these two 
millions of people supposed that they received th^ir law 
from a burning mountain, and were daily supplied with 
food during forty years in the wilderness, whereas in fact 
not a word was ever heard from the top of Sinai, and not 
a crumb of manna fell to earth from heaven. Now, that 
the narratives may be false is possible. That the whole 
story may be a fabrication is conceivable. But that mil- 
lions of men during forty years cheated themselves with 
illusions in matters touching their lives, is an absurdity. 
Such impositions on the senses are impossibilities. 

M. Renan is a poet in prose who paints a picture 
better than he points an argument. He claims that, in 
the supreme all-including and all-evidencing miracle of 
the Bible, the heart seduced into deception the 
eye, the ear and the finger. After His death the affec- 
tions of His disciples converted their dead Master into a 
phantom which they mistook for a living reality. But the 
fanciful and brilliant Frenchman must state his own case. 

" Death," he says, "is so absurd a thing when it smites 
the man of genius, or the man of large heart, that people 
will not believe in the possibility of such an error on the 
part of nature. The little Christian society of that day 
worked a veritable miracle: they resuscitated Jesus in their 



SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 1 1 3 

hearts by the intense love which they bore towards Him. 
The love of the passionate, fond souls is truly stronger than 
death, and as the characteristic of a passionate love is to 
be communicated, to light up like a torch a sentiment 
which resembles it, and is straightway indefinitely prop- 
agated, so Jesus in one sense, at the time of which we are 
speaking, is already resuscitated." 

M. Renan regards the narratives of the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ as the easy self-deceptions of passionate 
children. Now what say the very histories to which he is 
himself indebted for the facts of the resurrection ? Does 
the account these affectionate children give of themselves 
agree with the theories of the fanciful Frenchman? Did 
their hearts make them credulous? Was their love so 
strong that it created a phantom of the imagination? They 
themselves state that they were often insensible to the most 
powerful proofs of the resurrection. When they ap- 
proached the sepulchre they bore in their hands the 
evidences of their want of faith. Their spices were to 
embalm a corpse, and show that they expected to find a 
dead friend, not a living Lord. When after His resurrec- 
tion Jesus stood in their midst they supposed Him to be 
a ghost. He had to banish their doubts by appealing to 
His flesh and eating in their presence. Thomas for all 
time is a typical skeptic. After repeated appearances, 
even on the Mountain of Ascension, " some doubted. " 
Always the disciples charged themselves with a stupid 
incredulity. 

Let us apply to ourselves the fancies of M. Renan. We 
behold a friend expire; we follow him to his grave; we 
witness his burial. Could our affection make us believe 
we saw him alive? Or could it persuade us that we 
heard him, touched him, beheld him rise into heaven ? 
Suppose that, deluded by a passionate love, you affirmed 



1 14 SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 

such things when in fact your friend was in the grave ! 
You would be deemed a lunatic and sent to an asylum. 
To summon phantoms from tombs through our affec- 
tions; to impose on our memories words never spoken; 
to follow the delusion for years; to sacrifice life for the 
deception would be impossible to sanity. No intense 
love, nor enthusiastic fancy could persuade us that our 
buried dead are visibly, tangibly and audibly present 
about our tables and around our firesides. 

Passing from particular objections we remark that the 
Scriptures prepare us to receive their supernatural attes- 
tation by connecting it everywhere with the most perfect 
Moral Syscem ever known in our world. The two are in- 
separable. You must take them together. Nothing can 
be weaker than our modern effort to retain the moral sys- 
tem and repudiate the supernatural system as antiquated 
superstition. Turn to the first verse of the Bible! It 
ascribes an elemental universe to the creation of God. 
Then follow cycles crowded with works produced by an 
Almighty Architect. A world is deluged and a race 
saved by a divine interposition. Patriarchal promises 
and covenants are made by the voice of God. Jehovah 
scourges Egypt, divides the sea, moves in cloud and fire, 
dwells visibly in tabernacle and temple. From Him 
through centuries prophets profess to receive their direc- 
tions, predict futurity and delineate a Messiah, whose 
birth, life and death are surrounded by the miraculous, 
and who is described as coming from a tomb to ascend 
the throne of a universe. Do the Scriptures open with 
the supernatural ? They close with the resurrection 
of a race to judgment and the conflagration of our 
world. Through all God is a prime actor. The 
Bible is a history of Jehovah in His manifestations to 
man. Especially is it a record of Redemption. Its moral 



SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 1 1 5 

system occupies a small space, and is always imbedded 
in the supernatural. Can you remove from the rock its 
composing shells? Can you take its fibres from a tree ? 
Can you separate from a body the minute cells that 
build up its life? Impossible! Of the Bible the super- 
natural is the substance. Yet amid its miracles and its 
prophecies is a matchless rule of virtue. Surely the 
excellence of the moral system is a presumption in favor 
of the supernatural system. He who enjoined immacu- 
late holiness could not devise detestable imposture. 

Between miracles and morals, by a few particular illus- 
trations, let me show you how intimate the connection. 

Does the Decalogue enjoin a pure worship of God and 
the strictest observance of our duties towards man? It 
was preceded, accompanied and followed by the most 
awful manifestations of the divine majesty suited to 
impress the senses of a rude people, and dispose them to 
a reverential obedience. More! The supernatural dis- 
plays authenticating the Law are parts of a continuous 
history beginning with the creation, and embracing in 
prophecy the everlasting future of man. 

In the Gospels still more impressive is this union of 
morals and miracles. Narrations of supernatural events 
occupy by far the greater part of the Evangelical His- 
tories. Nearly every precept of our Saviour stands 
related to a miracle. Does He preach on a mountain? 
Immediately before He heals the sick, and immediately 
after He cleanses a leper. Does He recommend benevo- 
lence as more acceptable than sabbatic sanctity? It is 
by curing a withered hand^ and making straight a 
deformed body. Does He sum all duty in the love of 
God and man? Just before in the narrative is an illus- 
tration of the resurrection of the dead. Would He show 
forever the touching beauty of human sympathy? He 



1 1 6 SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 

drops a brother's tear before the grave from which He 
commands a brother's life. Would He exhibit a lesson of 
charity? By miraculous bread He feeds a hungry multi- 
tude. Would He enjoin filial affection and the forgiveness 
of enemies? It is on a cross where He dies for others above 
a world which He shakes, and beneath a sky which He 
darkens. He leaves His disciples a last proof of love by 
lifting over them hands of blessing in a passage from 
earth to heaven. 

St. Paul, who wrote the immortal description of charity, 
relates also that he heard a divine voice, saw a divine 
light, and was converted by a divine power. 

Behold the grand characteristic of the Bible! Every 
miracle is a teacher of truth and a promoter of virtue. 
The apochryphal, the mediaeval, the modern prodigies are 
isolated and disjointed, as also puerile and contemptible. 
Too often they bear the marks of avaricious or ambitious 
imposture. But the Scriptural miracles are evolutions of 
a venerable system extending through centuries, each 
performing its part in authenticating revelation, each hav- 
ing its place and mission, and all, like stones in an edifice, 
portions of one majestic temple of truth. Works of 
superstition pass away after filling the pockets of villains 
and exciting the stare of the multitude. Never do they 
become incorporated with the moral and intellectual 
development of humanity. How different the miracles 
of the Scriptures! Chiefly they were designed to attest 
Revelation. Yet that done they never die. They live 
to enforce the moral system and to guide the spiritual 
experiences of Christianity. They teach at the fireside 
and glow in the pulpit. They become the holy emblems 
of the Church, musical in her songs, and beautiful in her 
art. Yes! the miracles of the Bible are both inspirations 
to genius and symbols of Salvation. 



SUPERNATURAL EVIDENCE. \\J 

In conclusion, permit me to mention a characteristic 
of Scriptural Supernatural Evidence too long overlooked. 

With all their genius the Greeks made slight progress 
in the knowledge of the universe. Aristotle sometimes 
approached the modern inductive methods, but the world 
for ages was beguiled from them by the brilliant imagi- 
nation of Plato. In his Phcedon he taught that truth 
must be reached by suppressing the senses and looking 
into the soul for her pure image. This turned man into 
a philosophical abstraction. His physical nature was 
depreciated to exalt his intellectual. Mere spiritualized 
fancies were substituted for the study of laws in facts. 

Modern science secures her triumphs by regarding 
man in his whole constitution. Instead of despising, she 
employs the senses. To secure her eminence she climbs 
the steep and narrow paths of observation and generali- 
zation. On facts she bases her structure of eternal truth. 
Her astronomical calculations she verifies by the tele- 
scope. By the spectroscope she proves to the eye the 
unity of the universe. Surrounded by retort and battery 
the chemist does not disdain touch, or taste, or even 
smell. Geology, botany, mineralogy, and a whole sister- 
hood of studies, base themselves solely on observation. 
Modern science bears into the midnight of nature the 
lamp of the senses that by them Reason may be guided to 
the truth. 

To these inductive methods how similar the system of 
Supernatural Evidence in the Scriptures! First consider 
prophecy. This does not employ abstract processes, 
metaphysical deductions, or philosophical speculations. 
It makes, like science, its appeal to sense. In Isaiah, in 
Jeremiah, in Ezekiel, study the pictures of Babylon, 
Ninevah, Tyre, Petra, and Jerusalem! Survey now the 
ruins of those ancient cities as visible to the modern 



1 1 8 SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 

explorer! How the sketch of the prophet corresponds to 
the account of the traveller! The eye reads the predic- 
tion on the page of Revelation, and the eye reads the 
fulfilment on the page of Providence. 

More striking still the comparison between the graphic 
prophetic delineations of the Messiah in the Old Testa- 
ment, and the vivid histories of the Messiah in the New 
Testament. Resembling the scheme of science, the 
scheme of prophecy, from creation to judgment, embrac- 
ing individuals, cities, kingdoms, empires, races — so vast, 
so minute, so protracted — is an appeal to the eye. 

Applied to miracles the illustration is even more com- 
plete. 

Would the Creator evince to a rude people his Person- 
ality? He breaks the uniformity of nature which lulls the 
soul into pantheistic stupor by violently interfering with 
that mechanism of the universe whose perfection of 
operation silently removes God from the faith of man. 
Behold Him come forth from His repose in His majesty 
to convince the multitude of His existence and impress 
the obligation of His laws, not by arguments addressed 
to reason, but by displays overawing through the senses! 
His attributes are no longer capacities slumbering in His 
Godhead. They become living and perceptible facts, 
incorporated with the world's history by a power and 
wisdom manifestly infinite. Is an ideal of virtue to be 
displayed? It is not by the song of the poet, the picture 
of the orator, or the speculation of the philosopher, but 
by the example of a man mortal, yet divine. Is wisdom 
to be taught? In Jesus Christ she is not a system but a 
life. Is immortality to be revealed? It is witnessed by 
the eye in the resurrection and ascension of a triumphant 
Saviour, and is no longer an argument, but an incarna- 
tion, and not an expectation, but a fact. 



SUPERNA TURAL E VIDENCE. 1 1 9 

By addressing the senses Scripture is in sympathy with 
science. Ancient philosophy scorned this physical part 
of man's nature. Hence she gave no progress to 
humanity. Everything petrified under her touch, until 
Bacon, following the dim hints of Aristotle, showed that 
our knowledge of the universe must be based on observa- 
tion and experiment. Science at once becomes a new 
power. Through the organs of the body she marries the 
soul to the universe, and lo! a birth of universal blessing. 

But while science through the ages was groping towards 
these achievements, Religion laid the foundation of her 
system in supernatural testimonies. To eye and ear her 
miracles and her prophecies had long been her evidences. 
What we laud in science shall we deride in Christianity? 
Ultimately both rest on the senses. How strong the 
presumption that both are parts of the same scheme and 
derived from the same original ! 



120 PRESUMPTIONS. 



LECTURE IX. 

PRESUMPTIONS FAVORABLE TO JESUS CHRIST 

IN His humanity Jesus Christ was an unlettered Jew. 
Described as having royal blood in His veins, He was 
yet the reputed son of a poor mechanic. He passed His 
early life in a small village. While rabbis were not His 
instructors, publicans, fishermen and artisans must have 
been His companions. Indeed, for these very reasons 
His claim as a teacher was repudiated by the learned 
and exclusive doctors of Israel. About the temple 'the 
priests rejected Him with insults. Under such circum- 
stances we might expect something in the thought and 
style of our Saviour indicating His origin and associations. 
In a similar situation no other man ever escaped the 
taint of a village ignorance, and vulgarity. You look for 
this in vain in the actions and discourses of Jesus Christ. 
No instance can be produced of slang or provincialism, 
of national prejudice, of social jealousy, or offensive 
assumption. Through His words and deeds breathes an 
exquisite delicacy. Had this son of the people been 
born and educated in a palace like that of His ancestors 
David and Solomon, surrounded by princes and habitu- 
ated to the elegances of a court, He could not have 
manifested a more royal and refined courtesy. In His 
parables, His sermons, His ordinary conversations what 
simplicity, what propriety, what aptness, what dignity, 
what majesty! Art is exceeded. The ideal of culture is 
realized and surpassed. Especially in the Sermon on 



PRESUMPTIONS. 121 

the Mount, in the parables of the Prodigal Son, the Good 
Samaritan, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Dives and 
Lazarus, the Great Supper and the Ten Talents, do we 
discover a most exquisite beauty of conception and expres- 
sion. In these nothing of the village mechanic! Like 
the sun in a translucent drop, shines through them a 
visible glory unmarred by mortal blot. Never has been 
approached the touching and affectionate solemnity of 
the discourses before the crucifixion, the exclamations 
amid its agonies, the utterances after the resurrection, 
the majesty of command and promise previous to the 
ascension, or the sublimities of the descriptions of the 
Judgment with its awards of Life and Death everlasting. 
Here is nothing to mark the vulgar pretender and every- 
thing worthy the world's Messiah, 

We must remember also that Jesus Christ was character- 
istically a Jew. He was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob, of the tribe of Judah, of the family of the royal 
David. What could we expect from Him but the bigoted 
exclusiveness of His nation ? Moreover, in the forming 
period of His youth rabbinism was peculiarly dominant and 
restrictive. A system of caste prevailed almost as narrow 
and remorseless as that of India. The Jewish doctor 
despised the people, and regarded with haughty and pat- 
ronizing rigidity those inferior to him in rank. To Sad- 
ducees, to Pharisees, to Priests and Rabbis and People, 
the Gentiles were loathsome outcast wretches, having no 
part in the covenant of Jehovah, and doomed to ever- 
lasting exile from Heaven. Barriers deep as Hell sepa- 
rated all other nations from Israel. How then could a 
Jew of humble birth and imperfect education, rise above 
the prejudices of his race, the instructions of his teachers, 
the creed of his parents, the influences of his life, cut 
through the iron net-work of caste, hurl down the walls 



122 PRESUMPTIONS. 

of sect, rise superior to himself, and his nation, and soar 
above all obstacles to the summit of an unsurpassable 
philanthropy, and into an atmosphere of universal and 
eternal light, and establish a religion adapted to all times, 
to all places, to all peoples, whose fundamental doctrine 
of supreme love to God and equal love to our neighbor 
constitutes a moral system, suitable to men on earth, to 
angels in heaven, and all beings who can ever owe alle- 
giance to the throne of the Creator ? Such a truth may 
fitly shine as a halo around the brow of the Messiah of 
our humanity. It predisposes us to a belief in His claim 
as a Redeemer. 

And while our Saviour with aims the most revolution- 
ary was sweeping Judaism away, yet with a delicate con- 
servatism He was perpetuating whatever was universal in 
its application and everlasting in its importance. How 
minutely realized in Him the national expectations ! The 
ceremonial, the political, the moral elements of the old 
were not forgotten in the new. Heaven and Earth may 
pass away — Law and Prophet shall be fulfilled in Jesus 
Christ. Is this the spirit of imposture? Is this the 
temper of fanaticism ? Could a mere ambitious human 
ignorance have contrived the minute, the varied, the in- 
numerable correspondences between the types and prom- 
ises and predictions of the Old Testament, and the birth, 
character, actions, death, and asserted resurrection and 
ascension of Jesus Christ ? Or if the loftiest mortal 
genius could have conceived so many exquisite, subtle 
and beautiful harmonies, what possible earthly wisdom 
could have realized them in an actual life? Here again 
in our Saviour are all the marks of truth. 

Wonderfully mingled in Him the antagonistic elements 
of the revolutionary and the conservative. Judaism was 
not so much abolished as perfected by its expansion into 



PRE SUMP TIONS. 1 2 3 

Christianity. In seeming destruction types are fulfilled, 
promises are fulfilled, prophecies are fulfilledo The 
carnal becomes the spiritual; the particular the universal; 
the temporary the eternal. All the germs of Christi- 
anity were reposing in Judaism until in some plenitude of 
wisdom they flowered forth into an everlasting beauty 
and glory. Now this prudence, this delicacy, this com- 
mingling of opposites, this dignified reserve united with 
daring courage, are grand characteristics of Jesus Christ 
which make Him a model of wisdom for the world. In 
Him we find them as they should be in a Divine Messiah. 
But history enables us to see how different would have 
been the course of a vulgar, selfish, ambitious deceiver. 
The dream of the Jew was a Deliverer who could break 
the Roman chain, and establish in Jerusalem the throne 
of David to rule the world. Only such a Messiah could 
he see in the splendid visions of his prophets. His soul 
glowed with the hope of a universal dominion created by 
the sword of this predicted conqueror. Yet, while daz- 
zled with these dreams, a midnight of tyranny was over 
the country of the Jew. He was under the iron hand of 
the Gentile. Roman soldiers held his capital and dese- 
crated his temple. Shall the sons of Abraham bow to 
infidel oppressors? Shall David pay tribute to Caesar? 
Shall the children of Satan grind those elected through the 
covenant of Jehovah? By an army to drive the Roman 
from the city of David and the temple of God was the 
burning wish of the Jew. His passionate prayer was for 
a Messiah who would break his fetter, and bring a world 
to his feet. Only through the blood of battle did he 
expect to realize this brilliant dream of earthly dominion. 
Hence the Jewish impostor always sought the popular 
support by personating such a conquering Messiah. 
Now we know that Jesus Christ created a boundless 



124 PRESUMPTIONS. 

enthusiasm among the people. They followed Him in 
crowds with hosannas. Gladly they would have made 
Him King. Had He accepted an earthly crown, priests, 
scribes and Pharisees had been His followers. They 
were waiting and watching for such a deliverance as 
seemed signified by His words and works. People, syna- 
gogue, sanhedrim, and temple might have been at His 
disposal. Such a temptation would be irresistible to 
imposture. Why did Jesus Christ refuse to realize a 
nation's dream? Why was He deaf to a nation's call? 
Why was He not dazzled by a nation's crown? He pre- 
ferred insults to acclamations. He chose thorns for His 
diadem. He mounted a cross instead of a throne. 
With Him a kingdom of this world was nothing com- 
pared with an everlasting regency in Heaven. No 
deceiver ever thus set aside the tangible rewards of time 
for the invisible glories of eternity. 

Remark also the instrumentalities chosen to establish 
and extend the new religion! They corresponded to the 
exalted spirituality of the system. We have seen that 
Christ could have allied Himself to priest and scribe for 
the emancipation of the nation. Then, representing tem- 
ple and synagogue, learned and powerful rabbis would 
have been his Apostles. A selfish and aspiring teacher, 
with vast talents and influence, would have secured 
such associates. To a calculating human wisdom what 
more absurd than to seek the instructors of Israel in the 
ranks of the obscure, and the unlettered! Can ignorance 
teach learning? Shall a rustic villager indoctrinate a 
capital dignified by sanhedrim and temple? In this new 
dispensation are fishermen and publicans to take their 
place in that venerable succession which includes Moses, 
and David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Daniel! Johns, 
Peters, and Matthews to crown a work graced by princes, 



PRESUMPTIONS. 1 25 

poets and law-givers of Israel! The glory of a grand 
prophetic past to terminate in ignoble and unlearned 
men! Nothing brought on Jesus Christ more ridicule 
and opposition than such a choice of His assistants. To 
overthrow idolatry, supersede Judaism, supplant philos- 
ophy, revolutionize a world, and make a religion universal 
with such instruments seemed absurd. Yet the wisdom 
of the Nazarene is justified by His success. Fishermen 
and publicans have surpassed prophets and kings. By 
lowly men Christianity was introduced and established. 
History never witnessed such a triumph. The most 
brilliant Gentile genius possessed not the power of these 
humble Jewish disciples. Unlettered apostles have be- 
come the teachers of our world. The impress of their 
writings is unrivalled in depth, usefulness and extent. Not 
only have they regenerated nations, but created litera- 
tures and philosophies, stimulated art and science, and 
collected around themselves the erudition of the ages. 
Mere worldly policy would never have selected the 
Apostles, and yet the choice of their Master is vindicated 
as worthy of the Messiahship, 

Nor should we overlook the form of the Evangelical 
Histories. Had they been developed in the order of theo- 
logical treatises, like such discourses they would have been 
doomed to the shelf, and never could have obtained a 
circulation among the people. How the Drama and the 
Romance seek popular favor in the variety and vivacity 
of Dialogue! Yet this is a preference having in view 
mere artistic effect. In the Gospels are no imaginary 
scenes and personages moving in paint and robe and 
mimicry beneath a theatrical glare. Nor do we perceive 
a trace of those literary arts which would excite attention 
by fascinations of plot, style and character. In the Evan- 
gelical History we have life itself. Speakers and actors 



1 26 PRE SUMP TIONS, 

are real men. Theology is vivified in biography. The 
wisdom which is to guide the ages springs forth from 
the most casual circumstances and the most trivial 
incidents. A despised Samaritan woman, a detected 
adulteress, a reclaimed Magdalen, a poor widow, a 
trembling paralytic, even a crucified thief furnish words 
and deeds which are to instruct man forever. Thus the 
smallest events of time become types and teachers for 
eternity. Yet all so natural and spontaneous that we fail 
to perceive the plan of an everlasting wisdom. Nothing 
resembles this in any literature. Art is so transcended 
as to be forgotten in the beautiful and unaffected simplic- 
ity of the Gospels. Without effort that dialogue which 
is the dream of Drama, Romance and Philosophy assumes 
a living power at once irresistible and inimitable. Should 
the Messiah appear He could have no record superior to 
the Evangelical Histories. 

We are struck also by the completeness in the life of 
Jesus Christ. His biography stands alone. In the 
career of every other man you can discover mistakes. 
Something is defective, or unfortunate, or to be regretted. 
You can suggest corrections. You are not satisfied. You 
would have it otherwise. In all other human brightness 
however dazzling there is yet a spot. How different with 
Jesus Christ! Here is perfection! With exquisite sym- 
pathy for our mortality the life of the Saviour is com- 
plete in its details, its development, its totality. Nothing 
can be added and nothing can be subtracted. A picture 
of Raphael, a statue of Angelo, the career of Paul, the 
character of Washington you may conceive improved. 
No human ideal beyond another touch. Who would 
change the life of Jesus? From manger to cross He is 
unalterable and inimitable. He stands by Himself in his 
pure and simple glory. He unites in career and charac- 



PRESUMPTIONS 1 27 

ter all we could expect in man's Messiah. Jesus Christ 
lived for others. Self was lost in benevolence. About 
Him was an atmosphere of holiness. Over Him was a halo 
of love. Forgiveness breathes for His enemies who mock 
Him with the taunt and pierce Him with the spear. What 
dignity in His resurrection! What majesty in His ascen- 
sion! If clouds received His person they did not obscure 
His example. His influence has come down through the 
ages. In proportion as men are good they are drawn to 
Him. It is in pious hearts He lives. He is the spring 
of the holiest affections. He is the object of the sub- 
limest hopes. He is the ideal of the moral perfection of 
our manhood. Always is His image crowned as with 
light from Heaven. As rays converge to the sun all 
virtues centre in our Saviour. Remove from our world 
the character of Jesus Christ and you abandon it to 
moral gloom. Let His religion be established among the 
nations, and you realize for humanity its dream of uni- 
versal love, light and joy! In His system and in His 
character you perceive the marks of a Messiah superior 
to all human conception. 

One characteristic marks false religions. They sacri- 
fice the moral to the ceremonial. Haughty, vengeful, 
murderous, Achilles was a pious hero if he presented 
libations and offered hecatombs. Paris could have 
Helen if he sacrificed to Venus. A temple to Jupiter 
would condone the avarice of a Pygmalion. The smoke 
of the altar, the beauty of the shrine, the pomp of the 
procession, the costliness of the gift hid the lust of the 
heart and the evil of the life. Even now men sometimes 
forget the heinousness of the sin in the glitter of the cere- 
mony. Often the garb of the philosopher has concealed 
a pride as offensive, if not so pernicious, as vice or crime. 
Only one system begins in the conscience. The old 



128 PRESUMPTIONS, 

prophets considered the splendor of their visions, and the 
magnificence of their ritual as nothing compared with 
moral rectitude. Separated from a pure life sacrifice was 
an abomination. But our Saviour penetrated to the 
intention of the soul. Repentance was His first trumpet- 
call to the conscience. He demanded absolute sincerity 
and the renunciation of every sin. There was no other 
path to the cross and heaven. By his works every man 
was to be known, and rewarded or punished everlastingly. 
Holiness was the aim of Jesus Christ. Holiness was to 
flow from the heart and purify the life. Holiness alone 
makes suitable for heaven. No Messiahship could have 
a loftier aspiration or more indubitable signature than the 
creation of a universal kingdom founded on everlasting 
holiness. 

All the considerations urged have produced in men a 
confidence and admiration which, of themselves, consti- 
tute a presumption in favor of Jesus Christ. Especially 
when we remember His transcendent claim does the 
argument become forcible and the phenomenon unex- 
ampled. 

The veneration inspired by our Saviour is instinctive. 
Even the wicked are touched by the beauty of His words, 
the glory of His works, and the sublimity of His love. 
According to the fashion of our times the men who most 
deride His miracles are loudest in their praises of His 
character. Let us see to what conclusion we are con- 
ducted by this universal admiration ! 

Human nature resents boastful assertion. Unless 
supported, grand claims and pompous titles excite the 
sneer. Pretentiousness never long keeps its place in the 
veneration of the world. Time discovers imposture and 
scatters stolen plumes. Only modest merit endures. 

But while Jesus Christ is thus loved and venerated ; 



PRESUMPTIONS. 1 29 

while canvas and marble represent His mild majesty ; 
while poetry celebrates Him in song, and architecture 
erects to Him temples, no man ever claimed for himself 
such transcendent powers, such implicit obedience, such 
overmastering authority. No philosopher of ancient or 
modern times dared describe himself in such terms as 
are habitually appropriated by Jesus Christ. Compared 
with the words He uttered and the titles He assumed, 
even oriental royal records are the merest modesty, 
unless we concede to the Founder of Christianity a 
right to His matchless prerogatives. How is it that 
while the pompous vanity of the monarch-conqueror 
excites a smile, the more soaring claim of the lowly Naz- 
arene does not cloud our admiration ? What would 
hurl any other mortal from his pedestal lifts Jesus Christ 
higher in our esteem. 

How true, how deep, how exalted, how matchless, 
how divine the merit which prevents such claims from 
being resented as odious, absurd, and contemptible! 
Without foundation they would be ridiculed from the 
the world. Jesus, indeed, describes Himself as the vis- 
ible glory of Godhead. He places Himself on the 
throne of the universe. Subject to Him are Hell and 
Heaven. And although born in a manger, nailed to a 
cross, and buried in a grave, humanity gives Him the 
homage of its instinctive and affectionate reverence as if 
it indeed recognized Him as the monarch of creation. 
In this fact I find a strong presumption in favor of His 
Divine Messiahship. 

Permit me to make one concluding suggestion. It 
would seem impossible for mere human genius to describe 
the perfection of God united to our mortal nature. How 
far shall the divine element prevail? How far the human? 
How shall the two be harmoniously combined? What 



I30 PRESUMPTIONS. 

peril in the attempt! Who can adequately express the 
infinite love, power, wisdom, holiness and majesty of 
God manifested in the life of a suffering and dying man? 
In such a picture are requisite what boldness, what deli- 
cacy, what subtle mastery of thought and style! Almost 
certainly must the result be absurd, or ludicrous, or mon- 
strous. Yet in Jesus everything comports with Jehovah. 
The life of the man on earth is not unsuitable to the 
glory of God in Heaven. As rays to the sun, the terres- 
trial in Christ points naturally to the celestial. Harmo- 
nized in time, Human and Divine will harmonize through 
eternity. Between the two is neither breach nor chasm. 
The biographies of unlettered Jews are fitting introduc- 
tions to the Everlasting Kingship of the Incarnate Creator 
of the Universe. Of what other man of earth's millions 
could you affirm that his career and character were not 
incongruous with a dignity so transcendent? Only the 
sketches of Jesus in the Gospels can be considered worthy 
parts of a terrestrial experience and development, which, 
without violence, or impropriety, can be carried upward 
and onward to a celestial majesty divine and everlasting. 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION'. I31 



LECTURE X. 

PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

SEPARATELY and independently to establish each 
particular miracle of the Bible would be a work vast 
and impossible. Nor is it necessary. Twilight is indeed 
welcome before the appearance of the sun. But the 
morning vanishes in his noon's kingly brilliance. Proph- 
ecies and miracles were only heralds of a splendor 
promised in the day of Jesus Christ. We need not dwell 
in their twilight of proof if we have a blaze of brighter 
evidence. In condescension to our human weakness we 
have one grand test of Christianity including everything 
before it. Prove the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and 
reason is satisfied. Did He rise from the dead? Then 
He is the star of the Old Testament and the sun of the 
New. The Resurrection is the keystone to the arch of 
both dispensations. Rather it is the crown of the proof 
of the whole Scripture. To it all the other testimonies 
converge, and in it are included, so that, even logically, 
on it we may concentrate our arguments. 

And its proof involves only facts. Neither theory nor 
speculation is necessary. Philosophers and scientists are 
not essential to our inquiry. Modern law refers many 
questions to persons trained to special excellence called 
experts. These cases are exceptional, and often produce 
embarrassment through differences of opinions arising 
from professional pride and interest. Usually in our 
courts the truth is best attained by means of witnesses 



132 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

drawn from the ordinary walks of life, and who are 
recommended by shrewd natural sense and integrity of 
character. 

Testimony is the scriptural proof of the Resurrection. 
The Bible bases Christianity on the senses. Our Lord 
appealed to the eye, to the ear, to the finger. He 
claims to have been seen, heard, touched, after His Resur- 
rection. To prove Himself no disembodied spirit, it is 
narrated that He ate fish and honeycomb. He is described 
as saying to His disciples, " Handle Me and see," and to 
Thomas, " Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands, 
and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side." 
How clear and emphatic His recorded words! "Thus it 
behooved Christ to surfer, and to rise from the dead the 
third day, and ye are witnesses of these things." The 
grand function of the apostolic office was this testimony 
to a risen Saviour. When choice was made to fill the 
place of Judas it was said, " Wherefore of these men who 
have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus 
went in and out among us, from the baptism of John, 
unto the same day that He was taken up from us, must 
one be ordained to be a witness of His Resurrection. 1 * 
This was St. Peter's view of his mission as seen in his 
Pentecostal sermon. He is said to have cried to the Jews, 
*' This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are 
witnesses" And in preaching to the Gentiles when 
Cornelius was baptized, the great apostle was yet more 
explicit. He is represented as affirming, " And we are 
witnesses of all things which He did, both in the land of 
the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they slew and hanged 
on a tree. Him God raised up the third day, and showed 
Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen 
before of God." 

This testimony of the Scriptures exists in a form which 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 33 

lawyers style a deposition. Formerly it was supposed 
that all the advantage to truth is in a trial by jury, where 
the face and manner of the living witness can be scruti- 
nized. Now, however, eminent practitioners prefer to 
have testimony taken and recorded in a private office, so 
that the judge can investigate the deposition at his leisure, 
and deliberately apply every legal test to the veracity of 
those whose evidence he examines. In such a case he 
deems the record sufficient in itself, and does not go 
beyond it for the truth. 

It is according to this approved modern method we are 
to try the Gospels and the Acts, those five Evangelical 
Histories containing, as we claim, in themselves the 
proofs of our Saviour's Resurrection. The apostolic 
witnesses cannot be before us, but like the judge in 
chambers, we have substantially their depositions. St. 
Matthew and St. John profess to describe what they saw 
and heard. St. Mark and St. Luke composed their 
narratives on the reports of others. St. Paul asserts that 
he heard the voice of Jesus Christ and saw His glory, not 
only after the resurrection of His Master, but after His 
ascension into Heaven. He affirms that his Lord said 
unto him, " I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, 
and stand upon thy feet: for I have appointed thee for 
this purpose to make thee a minister and a witness both 
of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things 
in the which I will appear unto thee." 

In the case of eye-witnesses, like St. Matthew, St. 
John and St. Paul, we have the advantage of directness, 
but in biographers like St. Mark and St. Luke who gather 
materials from many eye-witnesses, we secure the benefit 
of numbers. Few histories are based on both methods. 
Hence the Scriptures combine all possible excellences in 
the nature of their record. 



134 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

We may also remark that we have already ascertained 
the authenticity of the Evangelical Histories containing 
the narratives of the Resurrection and Ascension of 
Jesus Christ. A mind unconvinced by the evidence 
presented would be satisfied with no possible testimony. 
Its difficulties are beyond the power of argument. 

As lawyers say in their pleadings, we have now nar- 
rowed the issue. It does not extend over the whole 
Scriptures. It does not embrace questions of super- 
natural manifestation during thousands of years. It is 
confined to a single fact. We are judicially to examine 
the Evangelical Histories, and by the rules of legal evi- 
dence discover whether the Apostolic witnesses are to be 
believed when they assert that they saw, heard and 
touched Jesus Christ after His Resurrection, and then 
beheld Him ascend into Heaven. On their testimony 
that He came from the tomb and vanished in the clouds 
on His passage to His throne, we are invited to a faith 
declared essential to our salvation. 

The Evangelical Witnesses are credible, 

I. ON ACCOUNT OF THE SIMPLICITY OF THEIR NARRA- 
TIVES. 

In our age a style has arisen called sensational. You 
will find its most characteristic example in the de- 
scriptions of a modern reporter. The sale of his nar- 
rative is the key to his style. His invention is taxed, 
and his imagination exhausted to make his report dis- 
posable in the market, and hence his agony of effort ex- 
pressed in bombastic exaggeration. This sensational 
style is always most suspected in a tribunal of justice. 

Let us apply this principle of Legal Evidence to the 
Evangelical Histories! Passing out of the gate of a city 
our Saviour is said to have met a youth on a bier carried 
to his grave. To the mother Jesus addresses two words* 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 35 

"Weep not," and to the son, in the original, four, trans- 
lated into English: "Young man, I say unto thee arise." 
It is briefly added, " and he that was dead sat up, and 
began to speak; and He delivered him to his mother." 
Closing the narrative is a short record of the effects on 
the spectators and the country. Not a comment, not an 
apology, not an inference, not an exclamation ! 

In a tempest, on a midnight sea, our Saviour is repre- 
sented, with the simple majesty of conscious power, as 
saying to the winds and waves, " Peace ! be still ! " To 
command His friend from the grave, as a monarch ex- 
pecting obedience, but in the fewest words possible, He 
cries, " Lazarus, come forth !" In every part of the Gos- 
pels you perceive this concise simplicity. You find only 
transparent purity of soul and aim and style, without a 
mark of the impostor who would sell his fraud for gold, 
or excite the wonder of ignorance. Most marvellously 
is this true in regard to the events which precede, accom- 
pany and follow the Resurrection. Suppose that this 
instant the earth should shake, the sky shroud itself in 
gloom, and the graves yield forth their dead ! On the 
third day after let the crucified man who had been the 
central figure of these terrors come alone from his tomb. 
Any honest witness in recording such facts might be be- 
trayed into a momentary exaggeration. But how would 
a sensationalist fabricating the account for gain or fame 
break forth into extravagance of thought and style ! In 
the Evangelical Histories three Greek words describe the 
shaking earth; three the rending rocks; three the open- 
ing graves, and thirteen the portentous gloom caused by 
a darkened sun, while in the briefest manner is recorded 
the appearance of the risen dead. 

In the same simple language the Evangelical Witnesses 
relate the circumstances of the Resurrection. Also in a 



136 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

few plain words St. Luke, in the Acts, records the maj- 
esty of the Ascension. 

Is this the manner of impostors who would sell a lie ? 
Consider the import of these events ! How exalted 
above all ordinary history ! In the duration and circuit 
of the universe they cannot be transcended. Created 
intellect can conceive nothing more sublime. We can- 
not understand how Godhead could do more. A man 
is nailed to the cross. Having expired, he is taken 
down, enrobed, embalmed, interred. He bursts from 
the grave. He walks on the earth. He rises into 
Heaven. By these acts he is claimed to have proved 
himself the Incarnate God, the Author of the creation, 
the Messiah of the Jew, the Redeemer of a world, the 
visible King of the Universe. Yet the simple style of the 
record is in everlasting contrast to the labored and pom- 
pous words by which knaves would on the credulous im- 
pose tneir magnificent forgeries ! 

The Evangelical Witnesses are credible, 

II. ON ACCOUNT OF THE HONESTY WITH WHICH THEY 
NARRATE THEIR FAULTS. 

Deceivers, all and always, try to make the best of 
themselves. They conceal their defects and magnify 
their virtues, and are betrayed by an inevitable cant. 
Lawyers understand this principle of human nature, and 
constantly turn it to account in the examinations of wit- 
nesses and in arguments to juries. When a man on the 
stand ingenuously admits his errors ; when he brings 
himself out into the light regardless of consequences ; 
when he is willing to sacrifice his interest rather than 
his veracity he unconsciously draws to himself credit in 
a court of justice. 

Now these marks of truthfulness are visible in the Old 
and New Testaments as in no other volumes ever written. 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 37 

Noah, the builder of the ark, the second head of the 
human family, the progenitor of the Messiah, is repre- 
sented as having been intoxicated. No veil is cast over 
the deceits and weaknesses of Abraham, the father of 
the Jewish nation, the recipient of the promises and the 
covenanted friend of Jehovah. What a picture is given 
of the lies and frauds of Jacob, the parent of the tribal 
patriarchs, and who saw the typical ladder of glory 
rising from earth into heaven! We are told that impa- 
tient anger kept from Canaan that Moses whose rod 
plagued Egypt and divided the Red Gea, who was guided 
by cloud and fire through the wilderness, and who amid 
thunder and earthquake is said to have received the 
Law from Jehovah Plainly recorded the adultery and 
murder of David whose inspired Psalms during all ages 
were to be chanted by the Universal Church, while we 
have described the idolatry of that Solomon whose 
prayers brought into the temple the glory of heaven, and 
whose wise words make part of the canon of the 
Scripture. 

And thus too in the Evangelical Histories is no conceal- 
ment of ugly and damaging facts. The childishness, the 
stupidities, the rivalries of the Apostles are all in the record, 
yet without the cant of any mock humility. We have nar- 
rated the follies and the sins of men on whose testimony 
was to turn the everlasting salvation of millions, and 
whose writings were to illuminate all the future genera- 
tions of mankind in the way of holiness to Heaven. 
Surely Peter might be spared! Peter the prince of the 
Apostles! Peter the witness of the transfiguration, and 
the companion of the agony! Peter who was to hold for 
Jew and Gentile the keys of the Kingdom, and whose 
sermon at Pentecost was to be followed by the Baptism 
of the Holy Ghost! No! Peter is painted in colors 



138 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

blacker than those of his associates. All proved cowards. 
All forsook their Master. All fled. But Peter's loudest 
protestations of loyal love are described as followed by 
revolting blasphemies. 

Nothing so stains a man as abandonment of a friend 
in peril! Nothing so contemptible as cowardice ! Noth- 
ing so tests the inmost nature as an honest confession of 
sins by those claiming to be teachers of morals and guides 
of holiness! 

Measured by these standards, who ever gave such 
proofs of integrity as the writers of the Gospels ? Who 
ever were so honest against themselves ? Who ever with 
such simplicity recorded their own faults ? In their 
testimonies meet all the marks of absolute truthfulness. 
They were upright men whose words carry with them a 
conviction of sincerity. 

Again, the Evangelical Witnesses are credible, 

III. ON ACCOUNT OF THE VARIETY OF THEIR NARRA- 
TIVES AMID UNIFORMITY. 

Let five rogues together contrive a story to impose on 
a Judge ! Inevitably they will betray themselves. Ex- 
cessive anxiety not to contradict each other will produce 
suspicious agreements in minute circumstances. The 
attempt to conceal artifice is the means of its detection. 
Hence dovetailed testimonies are considered by lawyers 
as suggestive of collusive fraud in the manufacture of 
evidence. But where there is harmony in the essential 
with seeming discrepancy in the subordinate we have 
strong presumption of honesty. 

Now this is just what we find in all parts of the Evan- 
gelical Histories. Especially the mark of truthfulness 
mentioned distinguishes the records of the Resurrection. 
In these everything at first is startlingly confused. Often 
there is an impression of hopeless contradiction. But, 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 39 

as we shall see hereafter, when we obtain the clew to the 
different narratives, then the facts recorded fall into their 
natural order, one sheds light on the other, and the whole 
history becomes a beautiful and convincing harmony. 

It is thus with a picture composed of many figures, and 
for which we have no explanation. We gaze in bewilder- 
ment on the painted scene. It is puzzling, confusing, 
and unintelligible. Now we learn the design of the pic- 
ture. Instantly our eye fixes on the central figure, and 
all the inferior actors assume their true relations. The 
conception which kindled the artist flashes into ourselves, 
and instead of bewildering disappointment succeeds a 
glow of satisfaction and boundless delight. 

The Evangelical Witnesses are credible, 

IV. BECAUSE THEY PROVED THEIR SINCERITY BY SACRI- 
FICE. 

We do not mean that martyrdom for a doctrine estab- 
lishes its truth. It only proves the honest conviction of 
the sufferer. A man may burn for a false religion as 
well as for a true. By the agonies of his death he proves 
that he believes that for which he gives his life. 

Remember, however, that the Apostolic Witnesses 
suffered not for theories, but for facts. For facts did I 
say ? More correctly they died for a fact. As the lens 
gathers the scattered rays of the sun to a point, so all 
scriptural testimonies converge to the Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. Here Science and Christianity meet on a 
common basis. The grand crowning proof of the Bible, 
supreme and sufficient, depends on those very senses the 
Chemist employs when in his retort he analyzes a salt, or 
the Geologist when he examines a rock, or an Astronomer 
when he observes a star. Our witnesses died testifying 
that they saw, and heard, and touched their Lord after 
His Resurrection. To the visible, the audible, the tangi- 



140 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

ble they gave evidence, and sealed with their blood what 
they affirmed before Earth and Heaven. Thus their sin- 
cerity is unquestionable, while they testify, not to philo- 
sophical opinions, nor simply to religious doctrines, but 
above all to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ arose from 
the dead and ascended into glory. 

Let us examine more closely the circumstances under 
which the apostolic witnesses suffered martyrdom. For 
illustration we will select the example of St. Paul, espe- 
cially because it cannot be urged that he was dull, 
obscure, and ignorant. His social position was lofty and 
full of promise, while he was never surpassed in the 
discipline of his powers and the splendor of his genius. 
As Jesus was at once the reputed son of a carpenter and 
the true descendant of monarchs, thus representing 
humanity, so if the uneducated apostolic witnesses were 
in sympathy with the toiling multitude, St. Paul makes 
complete the Scriptural testimony because his birth, 
talents, and culture give him rank with the admired few 
who guide and adorn our world. 

Here then is a young Jew of the most shining gifts, 
the brightest promise, the highest education, a bigoted 
Pharisee, commissioned by the Roman empire, who, on a 
journey of persecuting rage, near the city of his victims, 
alleges that, in the midst of a glory out-dazzling the sun, 
he heard and saw the risen and ascended Jesus, and then 
after a life of toil, peril, and sacrifice seals his testimony 
with his blood. 

St. Paul was an impostor, a fanatic, or an honest 
witness. 

The first supposition is confronted with insuperable 
difficulties. Suppose that the apostle during years af- 
firmed that he had seen and heard Jesus, when in all he 
said he was a conscious liar. Inevitably his character 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 141 

would have been corrupted by such falsehoods. He 
could not have continued the wise, patient, brave, pure, 
loving, devoted man he is evinced to be in all parts 
of his writings. Besides, he could have had no selfish 
interest in the change. Imposture never turns from 
wealth to poverty, from fame to shame, from courts 
to prisons, from freedom to chains, from honors to mar- 
tyrdom. 

But was St. Paul a fanatic? Did he during the best 
years of a long life testify to the appearance of the phan- 
tom of a deceived sense, a weak heart, or a disordered 
brain, and after deluding others, perish himself, still 
clinging to his miserable error? This supposition is con- 
tradicted by all that we know of his character, his actions, 
and the beneficent results of his unexampled career. 
Who ever had more admirable balance of mind? What 
practical wisdom in his words! His writings give the 
most perfect rules for the conduct of our lives. With 
an eloquence discreet, chaste and beautiful he guards all 
the domestic, social and political relations. No fanatic 
with such reverence ever hedged about the sanctities of 
the marriage vow, or by his teaching and example gave 
such stability to states, kingdoms and empires. Rome 
had invaded his country, seized her capital, desecrated her 
temple, crucified the Master of the great apostle. Does 
he flame, into a socialist? Does he burn with the rage of 
our modern nihilists? Does he behave like those anar- 
chists who would destroy their tyrants with torch, dagger, 
and dynamite? No! He urges on the Romans submis- 
sion to the most infamous monsters who ever disgraced 
the imperial throne. Only the calm wisdom of a true 
and disciplined soul ever achieved such a triumph over 
the vengeful passions of our nature. You must believe 
such a man when through a life of peril, labor and sacri- 



142 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

fice, he testifies to a fact witnessed by his eye and his ear. 
Hear his memorable affirmation! 

" For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
received; how that Christ died for our sins according to 
the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose 
again the third day, according to the Scriptures, and that 
He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that He 
was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom 
the greater part remain unto this present, but some are 
fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James; then of 
all the apostles, and last of all He was seen of me also, 
as of one born out of due time." 

Nor in our admiration for the brilliant gifts, the match- 
less epistles, and the splendid career of St. Paul, must we 
underestimate the other Apostolic Witnesses. They 
were indeed plain, uneducated men. The success of their 
writings has been greatly owing to the ineffable charm of 
their subject. Also they claim that the Holy Ghost 
inspired and vivified their record. But we must remem- 
ber that they had shrewd, strong sense, tried integrity, 
and a natural adaptation to their work. If in a momen- 
tary panic they proved cowards, they afterwards evinced 
their true love to their Master through lives of toil and 
suffering crowned by the courage and constancy of 
martyrs. And what writings have ever impressed our 
world like the four Gospels and the Acts? What have 
converted so many individuals, shaped so many nations, 
moulded so many races? What have been the subjects 
of such numerous discourses, translations and commen- 
taries, and, multiplied by pen and press, have been so 
widely scattered over our world? Slight the influence of 
Greek and Latin and English classics compared with 
that of the five Evangelical Histories' The Apostolical 
Witnesses have transcended all other men in the power 
and success of their writings. 



PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION, I43 

Were they deceived in regard to Jesus Christ? Could 
they believe that through more than three years lie 
healed the sick; cured the deaf, and dumb, and halt, and 
lame, and blind; and that He himself was seen and heard, 
and handled after the Resurrection, when in truth He 
never restored a palsied limb, never cleansed a leper, 
never relieved a suffering sense, never performed one of 
the multitudinous recorded miracles, never left His grave 
to become visible, and audible, and tangible, and never 
ascended into the heavens? With such opportunities of 
information in regard to the person, work, death, resur- 
rection and ascension of Jesus Christ mistake was impos- 
sible to the Apostolical Witnesses. 

But were they not deceivers? If you can, believe them 
for a moment knaves! Reflect then on the poison of im- 
posture! How it pollutes and withers the moral nature! 
Evil proceeds from evil. Corruption produces corruption. 
Vile souls make vile lives. If the Apostolic Witnesses 
forged falsehoods they have inflicted on man the greatest 
wrong conceivable or possible. And they could be no 
better than their deeds. Yet these impostors preach 
repentance, conversion, holiness. These impostors pro- 
claim the moral law with its eternal sanctions. These 
impostors announce a universal judgment and an ever- 
lasting retribution. These impostors describe God in 
colors of matchless holiness. These impostors in their 
own lives were the best examples of purity, in their deaths 
were martyrs, and by their labors and writings have been 
the most successful regenerators of the world. 

But more even than His system was the character of 
Christ, an invention impossible to the Apostolic Witnesses. 
What exquisite beauty in the parables of Jesus! What 
power in His discourses! What benevolence in His deeds! 
What majesty in His person! What glory in His history! 



144 PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION, 

All He did, all He said, all He thought was for the good 
of others. The poor, the maimed, the halt, the deaf, the 
dumb, the blind, the palsied, the leprous, the diseased, 
the bereaved, the demoniac are attracted towards this 
Incarnate Love, and beg in crowds healing from His look, 
or word, or touch. With what dignified fortitude He moves 
forward to His predicted cross, where a universe might 
well make obeisance to Him as He dies! In the records 
of His Resurrection and Ascension what power, beauty, 
and majesty! Jesus Christ is the ideal of the perfection 
of our humanity! Jesus Christ is a model for men! 
Jesus Christ might be an example for angels! Yet im- 
posture flashed forth such an immortal glory! Imposture 
counterfeited ineffable love! Imposture expended itself 
in ceaseless beneficence! Imposture made for man his 
ideal of purity! Imposture placed before the universe 
the most sublime moral excellence conceivable! Impos- 
sible! 

Then the Apostolic Witnesses were not deceived. 
Then the Apostolic Witnesses were not deceivers. Then 
the Apostolic Witnesses bear true testimony when they 
say that after His Resurrection they saw Jesus Christ, 
they heard Jesus Christ, they touched Jesus Christ, they 
beheld Jesus Christ ascend from Earth into Heaven. 



NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 145 



LECTURE XI. 

NARRA TIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

WE shall henceforth treat the Resurrection as a 
proved fact. It remains to examine with care the 
narratives in which we find it recorded. Truth gains by 
investigation, and we will discover that the grand crown- 
ing testimony to Christianity will stand forth with new 
power and vividness the more scrupulously we compare 
the Evangelical Histories. Indeed, critical examination 
gives certitude to faith. 

To a hasty reader the narratives of the Resurrection 
seem startlingly and hopelessly confused and contradic- 
tory. Some think them rambling, chaotic, and almost 
intended to mislead. Thus by a deep wisdom the sus- 
picion of collusion is absurd. We begin our examination 
with a desire not now to defend the integrity of the wit- 
nesses, but the accuracy of their record. Let us see if from 
statements seemingly loose, disjointed and irreconcilable 
we can educe the order and harmony of a profound, con- 
vincing, and beautiful wisdom! 

In illustration of the difficulties of our work we will 
turn to the accounts of the celestial messengers who shine 
and speak in so many wonderful transactions. Observe 
what perplexity follows if the announcements are sup- 
posed to be made to the same persons as a superficial 
reader deems obvious! 

I. St. Matthew records the appearance and address of 
one angel to the women. 



I46 NARRA TIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

II. St. Mark records the appearance and address of 
one person, described as " a young man sitting on the 
right side clothed in a long white garment." This may 
have been an angel in human form. His announcement 
is similar to that of St. Matthew. Both Gospels in vary- 
ing ways relate the same event, and so far there is no 
evidence of contradiction. 

III. St. Luke, however, says that the women beheld 
11 two men who stood by them in shining garments." 
Here is an apparent discrepancy. St. Matthew and St. 
Mark say one, and St. Luke says two. The words to 
the women while similar in import are different in form. 

IV. St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke all include 
Mary Magdalene among the women at the sepulchre who 
saw and heard the celestial visitants, yet in St. John the 
scene, the persons, the words, and the incidents are 
widely different from the accounts of the other three 
Gospels. There are " two angels in white sitting the one 
at the head, and the other at the feet where the body of 
Jesus had lain." Nothing is said by them about the 
resurrection, or going into Galilee to meet the Saviour. 

Unquestionably if these are intended as narratives of 
precisely the same events, the confusion is appalling, and 
reconciliation impossible. And it at first appears that the 
Evangelists are aiming to record the same manifestations. 

A little patient investigation dissipates the clouds of 
these seeming contradictions. 

Your impression from St. Matthew is that only two 
women went to the sepulchre. He mentions the names 
but of "Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary." Read 
him alone, and you will suppose that these were all the 
women at the tomb on that eventful morning. Turn 
now to St. Mark! He adds Salome. Proceed to St. 
Luke! He speaks of Joanna also and of "other women 



NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. I47 

with them," in which general expression might be in- 
cluded a large number, while St. John gives the name 
only of Mary Magdalene. 

When first we read the Evangelical Records of the 
Resurrection we suppose that all the women came in a 
single company, and were witnesses together of the same 
events at the same time and under the same circum- 
stances. Indeed, this error is the source of the confusion 
and misapprehension on the subject. But in the accounts 
themselves we have no warrant for such an inference. 
When the contrary is made to appear a veil is lifted, and 
truth sheds her light of beauty over the harmonized nar- 
ratives. 

Friends and enemies of Jesus seemed alike to accept 
the cross as a final test of His claim to the Messiahship. 
All that He had wrought and taught was forgotten in the 
darkness that came down on the world obscuring the 
hearts and the memories of His disciples. None would 
believe in a Christ slain ignominiously by Jew and Gen- 
tile. Over His cause was the gloom of despair. In the 
men hope was certainly extinguished. Amid the agonies 
of the darkness a few rays glimmered into the hearts of 
the women, and their affections kept them lingering near 
the cross. Joseph of Arimathea begged for burial the 
body of Jesus which was delivered to him by Pilate. He 
" wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own 
new tomb which he had hewn out in the rock and he 
rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and 
departed.'' 

The enemies of Jesus seem to have remembered with 
distinctness His predictions of His resurrection. To 
prevent the possibility of deception, and stifle His hated 
claim forever in the tomb, Priests and Pharisees request 
from Pilate a guard of soldiers. Their petition is 



148 NARRA TIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

granted. A watch is set. Across the stone a cord is 
drawn and its ends are attached to the rock by waxen 
seals bearing the stamp of the empire. Until the morn- 
ing of the third day there is no visible change about the 
tomb. At the dawn of the Sabbath after the crucifixion 
we know that a number of the disciples gathered near 
the sepulchre, drawn by various motives. Some came 
impelled by their affections. Some brought embalming 
spices, and others perhaps had a vague hope of His res- 
urrection revived as they recalled His words amid the 
Sabbatic calm succeeding the terrible scenes of Calvary. 

Animated by a variety of feelings they would not 
approach the tomb together at the same moment. They 
differed in sex, in faith and hope and love, in zeal, in 
natural temperament, and a thousand minute circum- 
stances. Nor could they all have lived the same dis- 
tance from the sepulchre. The women of Galilee would 
not probably find accommodation in the same houses at 
Jerusalem. Moved by different impulses, influenced by 
different motives, dwelling at different distances and sur- 
rounded by different circumstances, naturally the disci- 
ples arrived at different times and in different companies. 
Even in any single group there would be great varieties 
of behavior. 

Armed, watchful and remorseless the terrible Roman 
soldiers stood about the sepulchre. The time was the 
dimness of the dawn when the shadows of the night 
were still lingering round the scene, and the place was 
amid the graves of the dead. Peril was in the approach. 
Over the body of the Saviour himself was a fearful 
mystery. Nor had the blood and gloom and agony 
about the cross yet vanished from memory. Also the 
first visitors to the tomb were timid women. What a 
trial to female nerves ! Bold men might tremble. The 



NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. I49 

most zealous and courageous would advance first and 
nearest to the sepulchre. We would find different per- 
sons in different groups gazing or conversing in different 
attitudes and at different distances from the sacred but 
awful place where centred the hopes of humanity. 

Assisted by these suggestions it is easy to harmonize 
the narratives of the Resurrection. 

The sun has not yet risen over Olivet. In the glim- 
mer of the twilight a group of women approach timidly 
the sepulchre and show by their embalming spices that 
they seek a dead and not a living Lord. Mary Magda- 
lene is there, and the other Mary. On their way Salome 
may have joined the company. To determine all the 
movements of these faithful friends of Jesus is unneces- 
sary and impossible. They have been anticipated by an 
angel. Lightning and earthquake have added to the 
terrors of the place. Hurled first to the ground the Ro- 
man guards have fled in dismay. After these visible dis- 
plays of mysterious power certain of the women reach 
the sepulchre. The stone has been rolled away. The 
tomb is empty. The women are astonished and terrified. 
From her previous life and character we may suppose 
that Mary Magdalene, more bold and self-reliant than 
the rest, would approach nearest the sacred spot. But 
if this was so, her venturesome courage was the first to 
yield, and she fled away bearing to the other disciples 
the strange and startling news. Soon she meets St. 
Peter and St. John to whom she relates the surprising 
facts. 

While this is occurring Salome and the other Mary, 
still lingering near the tomb, see the celestial messenger. 
His raiment is white as snow, and his face dazzles like 
the lightning. He sits on the stone as a radiant and 
solitary guard over the deserted but sanctified rock. As 



150 NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

related in similar words by St. Matthew and St. Mark, 
he first breaks the silence which has heretofore rested on 
the scene and says in mortal speech with immortal lips, 
" Fear not ye ! I know that ye seek Jesus that was 
crucified. He is not here, for He is risen as He said. 
Come see the place where the Lord lay ; and go tell His 
i disciples that He is risen from the dead ; and behold He 
goeth before you into Galilee ; there ye shall see Him." 

Having fled from the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene 
missed the first angelic announcement of the Resurrec- 
tion of her Lord. She has, however, met St. Peter and 
St. John and told them the astounding facts. Amazed 
and affrighted they run to see for themselves. Swifter 
than St. Peter the beloved disciple arrives first, pausing 
reverently before the rock where had reposed his Lord's 
body. His companion is restrained by no such delicacy 
of nerve and soul. With his characteristic impetuosity 
St. Peter rushes by St. John, passes through the door, 
stands within the sepulchre and notes in one part the 
the napkin which had bound the head of Jesus, and in 
another the linen which had folded His person, left be- 
hind as the witnesses of His mortality and identity. 

After the two apostles leave, Magdalene returns to the 
tomb. She had not heard the celestial voice which 
cheered her companions. She is alone. She is hopeless 
in her passionate grief. The sun seems gone from her 
life and she stands amid solitary gloom. Not only is 
Jesus dead, but His body has been taken. Her love can- 
not see it and embalm it. Dejected and deserted she 
stoops and gazes to find some token of her absent Re- 
deemer. Her loyal affection is rewarded. As she looks 
into the darkness, lo, she beholds the radiancy of celes- 
tial watchers! The sepulchre is bright with a visible 
glory! Magdalene sees "two angels in white apparel 



NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 151 

sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet 
where the body of Jesus had lain." Heaven has not for- 
gotten her Master. No monarch ever had such a guard 
at his grave. Standing without, her tears begin to flow. 
Even angels cannot assuage her lonely sorrow. She 
wants her absent Lord. Jesus only will bring joy to her 
soul. Hark! she is addressed! " Woman, why weepest 
thou?" Her answer shows the cause of her grief and the 
depth of her love. " She saith unto them, ' Because they 
have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they 
have laid Him.' " 

Angels have announced the Resurrection. Alive after 
death Jesus had not before made Himself visible to mortal 
eye. Who shall first behold the risen Lord? Mary, his 
mother? Peter, the honored? John, the beloved? No! 
His first appearance was to one reclaimed from the lowest 
depths of woman's degradation. What an eternal proof 
of His forgiving love ! After the angels, Magdalene first 
sees Jesus ! Exquisite the tenderness, delicacy and nat- 
uralness of the scene ! "J esus saith to her, ' Woman, why 
weepest thou?' She supposing Him to be the gardener 
saith unto Him, ' Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, tell 
me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away/ 
Jesus saith unto her, t Mary!' " The word, the look, the 
tone cause instant recognition. " She turned and said 
unto Him, ' Rabboni,' which is to say, 'Master.' " Thrilled, 
transported, she is too violent in her approach. Her 
passionate love may have been sensuous even in its ador- 
ing reverence. How earth and Heaven meet and mingle 
in all these wonderful scenes! The terrestrial never lost in 
the celestial! The doubt of Thomas! The impetuosity 
of Peter! The veneration of John! The tear, the rush, 
the rapture of Magdalene! Jesus would awe her with His 
gentle majesty. He says unto her, "Touch Me not! for I 



152 NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My breth- 
ren and say unto them I ascend unto My Father and your 
Father and to My God and your God/' 

Such a scene shows us the love of Jehovah beating in 
a human bosom. Passing from this touching interview- 
Jesus comes to the other Mary and to Salome. Almost 
equally affecting the mingled sweetness and dignity of His 
memorable words. " All hail ! " He exclaims. The 
women prostrate themselves. They embrace His feet. 
They worship their Lord. But He recognizes fear even in 
their adoration. How condescending to the weakness of 
woman's nerves! Sympathy breathes in His tone and 
softens in His eye, as He says, " Be not afraid ! Go tell 
My brethren that they go before Me into Galilee ! There 
shall they see Me." 

During some interval between the events described, 
Joanna and the other women of Galilee come upon the 
scene. They are laden with the fragrant testimonials of 
their affection. Behold them at the sepulchre! Messen- 
gers from Heaven appear ! u Two men stand by them 
in shining garments." Terrified, they fall prostrate with 
their faces to the earth, and while in this posture of fear 
they hear words which seem to imply a gentle rebuke to 
their want of faith in the prediction of their Lord. "Why 
seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here: He 
is risen! Remember how He spake unto you when He 
was yet in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be 
delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, 
and the third day rise again." Light flashes over their 
souls. The words of the Master brighten through the 
gloom of memory. They turn from the sepulchre and 
tell "unto the eleven and all the rest," the glad news of 
the Resurrection. 

St. Luke in his narrative adds words which seem to 



NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. I 53 

include the totality of these manifestations. a It was 
Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of 
James, and other women which were with them which 
told these thing unto the Apostles. And their words 
seemed to them idle tales, and they believed them 
not." 

Why was the risen Jesus thus first revealed to woman? 
To show that love is better than knowledge? To teach 
that the heart is superior to the head? Or was her 
delicate soul more susceptible to the sublime character 
of her Lord? What a tribute to her loftier moral nature! 
What a potent force was this preference in her own future 
elevation! What a proof of the divine wisdom in her 
selection! But there must now be a manifestation to man 
whose testimony is to be the basis of the Kingdom of the 
Messiah. 

Behold two disciples walking on the way to Emmaus! 
They are conversing about the recent occurrences around 
the sepulchre, and especially the appearances of angels to 
the women. Evidently they have been kindled into no 
glow of encouragement by the reported resurrection. 
Not only are they communing, but reasoning. Christi- 
anity in its dawn is both an affection and an argument. 
Who joins these sad men who had hoped to find in Jesus 
of Nazareth the Redeemer of Israel? As the two disci- 
ples are not startled at the appearance of this third per- 
sonage, we infer that He had a mortal form. But as He 
talks their hearts burn with a strange joy. He refers to 
the prophets. He shows that Christ was predicted to 
pass through suffering into glory. He sheds new light 
on the Scriptures. Arrived at their village He would 
press forward. But their glowing hearts constrained Him 
to enter their abode, "And it came to pass as He sat at 
meat with them He took bread and blessed it and break 



154 NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

it unto them, and their eyes were opened and they knew 
Him and He vanished out of their sight." 

A new flame is in the hearts of these favored disciples 
which must diffuse its glow. They return to Jerusalem 
and proclaim that very hour the joyful intelligence to 
those Apostles who are hereafter to be the chosen wit- 
nesses of the Messiah. Hear their simple words: "The 
Lord is risen indeed and hath appeared unto Simon. And 
they told what things were done in the way, and how He 
was known of them in breaking of bread. And as they 
thus spake Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and 
saith unto them, Peace be unto you." 

The last three Gospels record this interview, each 
relating part of the Master's words. St. Mark gives the 
first commission to preach and baptize. St, Luke nar- 
rates the terror of the disciples, and the memorable chal- 
lenge, 4 Behold My hands and My feet that it is I myself! 
Handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones 
as ye see Me have." St. John informs us that Jesus 
coming into their midst, and pronouncing the benediction 
of peace, also said after breathing on them, " Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost. Whose sins ye remit they shall be 
remitted, and whose sins ye retain they shall be retained." 

But Thomas was not present at this interview. He 
doubted the testimony of the other disciples. To him 
the resurrection seemed an impossibility. The other 
witnesses convinced by their eyes, had not probably 
accepted the challenge of Jesus, and proved His identity 
by feeling His person. Joy, or assurance, or reverence 
rendered such a gross test repulsive and unnecessary. 
Thomas has no such scruples. His words imply a 
reproach against his associates for their reserve or their 
neglect. He will not hesitate to examine the wounds of 
his Master with a more faithful honesty. And the very 



NARRA TIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. I 5 5 

grossness of his demand becomes a final and supreme 
proof that the Jesus nailed to the cross and laid in the 
grave was He who was seen by His disciples. After 
eight days, when the doors were shut, He stood in their 
midst, with the blessing of peace, and said to Thomas, 
" Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands, and 
reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side, and be 
not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and 
said unto Him, ' My Lord and my God.' " 

Arranged thus there is no conflict, but a beautiful 
harmony in the manifestations of Jesus Christ after His 
Resurrection. Minute comparison removes doubt and 
inspires belief. Only those who search will find eternal 
truth. 

To fix chronologically the appearance on the shore of 
Tiberias is difficult. But as it conflicts with no other 
record the precise time is of less importance. Whenever 
the occurrence, nothing can be more affecting. 

Morning glances over the sublime summits of Lebanon. 
As the dawn vanishes deeper shadows from the sun rest 
on the shores and hills of Tiberias. St. Peter is on a 
vessel in the lake. What form on the land is visible in 
the brightening light ? As John has been swifter than 
Peter so is his vision keener. He exclaims, " It is the 
Lord." These words excite recognition, and awake all 
the love and energy of the impulsive disciple who rushed 
first into the tomb. Girt with his fisher's coat, Peter 
flings himself into the sea and swims to his Master. All 
soon collect around a " fire of coals." After dinner be- 
gins a conversation memorable forever for its exquisite 
tenderness, delicacy and beauty. Only the divine in the 
human could breathe over the denying Peter such a 
sympathy of love. To art the picture is impossible: 

" Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these? 



156 NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love 
Thee. He saith unto hirn, Feed my Lambs! He saith 
unto him again the second time, Simon, Son of Jonas, 
lovest thou Me ? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord, Thou 
knowest that I love Thee. He said unto him, Feed my 
Sheep! He said unto him a third time, Simon, Son of 
Jonas, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved because He 
said unto him a third time, lovest thou Me? And he said 
unto Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest 
that I love Thee." 

The next appearance of our Lord is in Galilee, where 
the disciples have assembled at His command. All stand 
together on a mountain. Sublime emblem of that Pulpit 
which is to make universal proclamation of a Redeemer! 
The wide earth, the free air, the expanse of heaven are 
all symbolic of a commission extensive as our race, and 
enduring as time. Henceforth not Judea, but the world 
is to be the field of the Church. Hear words spoken for 
every land and for every age ! 

" All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Go 
ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Ghost! Teaching them to observe whatever I have com- 
manded you, and lo, I am with you always even unto the 
end of the world!" 

Behold the close of this wonderful career! Jesus and 
His witnesses are on Olivet. Fitly the place of the cru- 
cifixion and the resurrection should be overlooked by 
the mountain of the ascension. The final triumph is re- 
corded with what words of beauty, affection and majesty! 

" And He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He 
lifted up His hands and blessed them ; and it came to 
pass while He blessed them He was parted from them, 
and carried up into Heaven." 



NARRA TIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. I 57 

As He lifts Himself to His glory, how suitable to His 
nature and mission that He should stretch His hands in 
blessing over the earth that had pierced Him! 

The narrative in the Acts, also remarkable for power 
and dignity, expresses more fully that fact of testimony 
on which Christianity is forever founded. 

" And ye shall be witnesses unto Me, both in Jerusalem 
and in all Judea, and unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth. And when He had spoken these things, while 
they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received 
Him out of their sight." 

Having thus shown the delicate and beautiful har- 
monies in the Evangelical Histories of the Resurrection, 
permit a few comments on those narratives of facts so 
marvellous, stupendous and unexampled. 

I. YOU WILL REMARK THE PROOFS THAT OUR LORD 
APPEARED IN HIS VERITABLE BODY. 

Seen first by Mary Magdalene, He was mistaken by her 
for the gardener, and recognition came through the famil- 
iar tone of his voice. Incidentally, but conclusively, this 
proves that after His resurrection He was human in aspect 
and in reality. When Salome and the other Mary em- 
braced His feet it was evidently because they knew Him 
as their Lord. The disciples on the way to Eramaus re- 
garded Him as an ordinary traveller until He broke the 
bread and vanished out of their sight. But no cloud of 
doubt must obscure His identity. On this rested the 
proof of His Resurrection, and on the proof of His Resur- 
rection the whole scheme of Christianity. Hence His 
assertion that He was not a spirit, but possessed the flesh 
and bones of an ordinary human body. Hence He called 
for meat and partook of fish and honeycomb, to show by 
the most animalistic functions that He preserved His 
physical personality and was not sublimated into a spec- 



158 NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

tral shadow. Hence His command to Thomas to prove 
by contact with His wounds that He was the same Jesus 
who on the cross had His hand pierced by the nail and 
His side with the spear. By His yet open flesh would 
He establish His identity. On the shore of Tiberias 
His witnesses obeyed His familiar voice, and casting 
their net enclosed a multitude of fishes. But already He 
had supplied His physical needs. Landing they found 
fire, and fish and bread, and dined with the risen Jesus. 
His body sustained by food was essentially human. He 
was yet in the flesh perceptible to sense. All these 
minute circumstances, so trivial and so incidental, were 
legally necessary to prove the identity of Jesus Christ. 
Only on the testimony of eye and ear and hand could the 
Evangelical Witnesses establish the Resurrection, and 
place our immortality on an eternal foundation. 

II. BUT WHILE OUR RISEN SAVIOUR WAS PERCEPTIBLE 
IN HIS VERITABLE BODY, IT HAD ALSO SUPER- 
NATURAL ATTRIBUTES. 

During His ministry His usual habits were those of His 
disciples. He lived with His apostolic witnesses that 
they might acquire that familiarity with His person which 
was to be the basis of their testimony. He did not thus 
habitually mingle with them after His resurrection. His 
appearances were casual, sudden and extraordinary. 
While recognized as the same Jesus there was yet around 
Him some awfulness of mystery. During His absences 
where did He live ? Was His couch in the cave or the 
wilderness? Were angels His companions? Or did He 
dwell in solitude? What supported His human life? Did 
fish and bread on the shore of Tiberias prove that He 
lived on ordinary mortal food ? Or while invisible was He 
present a guest at their board, a spectator of their, deeds, 
a hearer of their words, one of their number while hidden 



NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 59 

from their gaze ? He could see, hear, eat, walk, speak, 
but He also came unseen and vanished suddenly, enter- 
ing when the doors were shut, disappearing with the 
facility of a spirit, always preserving the dignity and 
majesty suitable to a body which had come from the 
tomb, and was the tabernacle of a soul which had beheld 
the mysteries of Hades. With what delicacy, beauty and 
propriety Jesus adapted Himself to a condition which 
thus partook of the terrestrial and the celestial, the tem- 
poral and the eternal! 

III. MOST PROBABLY IN THE ACT OF THE ASCENSION 
THE BODY OF JESUS ASSUMED ITS EVERLASTING 
GLORY. 

By His Resurrection our Saviour had conquered death 
the universal destroyer. By coming alive from the 
tomb He reversed the law of mortality which had borne 
down to the dust of the earth all the generations of men. 
But there is a law wider than death, or our world, or 
our system. It rules the universe. Every atom of 
creation is under the power of gravitation. During our 
Saviour's earthly career His body was subject to earthly 
conditions. His ascension from Olivet indicated a 
change in this mortal state. Gravitation no longer kept 
His body in our world. Some transformation exempted 
Him from material law. Yet while rising He was visible 
until concealed by a cloud, and if perceived by a physi- 
cal organ He was not wholly a spiritual substance. 
When and how the change was completed is not revealed. 
We know that the mortal assumed the immortal. The 
body of the cross and the grave was fashioned into a 
glory suitable to the King of a universe. Hence the 
splendors of this ascended Saviour dazzled St. Paul into 
blindness. St. John affirms that His f( countenance was 
as the sun shining in his strength," and the Apostle fell 



l60 NARRATIVES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

as dead before His superlative majesty. We may be 
sure all the treasures of Divinity have been lavished on 
the body of Jesus to make it before His subject creation 
the visible and eternal tabernacle of His Godhead. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION l6l 



LECTURE XII. 
CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

NOTHING in our age more promotes skepticism than 
forgetfulness of the Resurrection as a living power. 
Testimony to its truth is the grand function of the Church. 
The mind is confused amid innumerable instances of 
the supernatural scattered over four thousand years 
of history. It is as if the pilot steered by the countless 
hillocks of the shore when one bold mountain should de- 
termine his course. How interesting then to trace the 
consequences of a stupendous central fact like the Resur- 
rection! 

I. IT PROVES THE MESSIAHSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST. 

The disciples had witnessed His miracles during His 
whole ministry. They had heard Him constantly apply 
ing to Himself the lessons of the Law and the Prophets. 
How vivid must have been the light thus shed over Him- 
self from the Old Testament! How deep must have 
been the impression from His signs and wonders ! Yet 
His works and lessons dissolve as a dream before His 
cross. What should have illuminated all, through their 
human feebleness darkened all. Every proof of Messiah- 
ship seemed obscured in the gloom of Calvary. But 
when convinced that Jesus rose from the dead, how His 
life and teaching came back to them with a new power ! 
Not only was hope kindled but memory was strengthened 
and reason enlarged. They had expected a temporal 
Messiah with a throne in Jerusalem. But Jesus is lifted 



1 62 CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

into Heaven as the King of the Universe. Here is a con- 
summation beyond every Jewish imagination, and yet 
when realized, visibly taught, typified and predicted for 
ages. When it was perceived that Christ on the cross 
was the one great satisfaction for sin, the Law and the 
Prophets, while fulfilled with an unsurpassable glory and 
grandeur, were not cast aside as dead and worthless tokens 
of an infant and imperfect past. They furnished to the 
sacrifice of Jesus a living language. Types and prophe- 
cies were vivified into a fresher and fuller beauty. Thus 
the facts of the Law became the apt, the varied, the ex- 
haustless illustrations of the Gospel. In the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus the Old and the New mingle and harmonize 
forever and the whole Scriptures stand forth illuminated 
with an everlasting light. The stars teach more exqui- 
sitely their lessons when we can compare them with the 
effulgence of the sun. 

And it is hazardous for any Christian to estimate 
slightly miracles and prophecies which preceded a resur- 
rection establishing the Messiahship of Jesus Christ. All 
were parts of one grand system. The apostles constantly 
appealed to the predictions of the Old Testament and to 
the signs and seals of the New. When we despise these 
as relics of a barbaric and exploded past we should exam- 
ine ourselves to discover whether we believe in the Resur- 
rection of Jesus to which they point as rays converge to 
the great orb of light and life; and what more fearful 
mockery than to unite in the celebration of the festival 
of Easter and secretly deny the vital fact testified even 
while it is kindling believers into an immortal joy! 

II. THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, PROVING HIS MESSIAH- 
SHIP, GIVES AUTHORITY TO HIS CHURCH. 

You will remember that we laid the foundations of our 
argument for the credibility of the Scriptures in the 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION, 163 

authenticity of the Evangelical Histories. On the Gospels 
and the Acts rests the whole scheme of Christianity. 
Only in them is the history of the Church, and their 
authenticity may be established by independent testimony. 
But when in addition to the authenticity of the Evan- 
gelical Histories we prove from them the Resurrection, 
then we have the Church founded on the consequent 
divine Messiahship of our Saviour as her everlasting 
rock. The argument is logically complete. The Church 
henceforth reposes on the proved Godhead of her Lord. 
Commissioned by Him the apostles went forth over the 
world to proclaim salvation by a divine authority. They 
were to guilty men ambassadors from God, and the 
Church became the living representative of the Sovereign 
of the universe, deriving her power from her risen 
Messiah. 

III. THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST ESTABLISHES 
THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Immediately after His introduction by baptism to His 
ministry, in the temptation of the wilderness, He used 
the Scriptures by them to conquer His adversary. In His 
sermon on the mountain, when announcing the principles 
of His universal kingdom, He was careful to show that 
He came to make perfect what Moses had left unfinished. 
He said: 

" Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, and 
the Prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 
For verily I say unto you, till Heaven and Earth pass 
away, one jot or one tittle shall in no way pass from the 
Law until all be fulfilled." 

Afterwards Jesus commanded the Jews to search the 
Scriptures, giving as a reason because they testified of 
Himself. Now we have proven that the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures existed in the times of our Saviour, and were in the 



164 CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

homes and synagogues of the Jewish people. It was then 
to those Scriptures He appealed. It was those Scriptures 
His countrymen were directed to examine. It was those 
Scriptures which He came to fulfil. After His resurrec- 
tion it is out of those Scriptures He reasons. " Begin- 
ning at Moses and all the Prophets He expounded to 
them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. ,, 
You will observe that no part is excepted. The explana- 
tion of the Messiah extended over the whole. In all the 
Scriptures He expounded whatever pertained to Himself 
as the sum and centre of the Old Testament. 

The explicitness on this subject is most striking. 
Jesus Christ is careful to describe the Written Word by 
all the titles current among the Jews. He also impresses 
on them the fact that whatever they saw and heard con- 
cerning Him was but a verification of what had been 
promised and predicted. 

" He said unto them, These are the words which I spake 
unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must 
be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and 
in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Me. 
Then opened He their understanding that they might 
understand the Scriptures, and said unto them thus it 
behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the 
third day." 

Thus, before and after His Resurrection Jesus Christ 
referred to the Hebrew Scriptures as the witnesses of 
Himself. This He considered their grand purpose. 
Nor does He leave any doubt as to what He intended by 
the word Scriptures. As we have seen, He speaks of 
them under the familiar titles by which they were then 
known. The Jews reverenced them as inspired by Jeho- 
vah. They themselves in all their parts claim to be the 
will and word of Jehovah. Jesus Christ gave every proof 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 65 

that He considered them from Jehovah. They were His 
standards. They contained His title to the Messiahship. 
They were used by Him as establishing the truth. 
" Thus it is written," was ever His final, His sufficient, 
His triumphant argument. And after His Resurrection 
how careful was He to place on the whole Hebrew Scrip- 
ture the seal of His proved Messiahship! In His passage 
from His grave to His throne He left on them the im- 
press of the authority of His Godhead. 

He did not distinguish one book from another. Nor 
did He wrest from Moses the authorship of the Penta- 
teuch, refer portions of it to an age a thousand years 
later, and ascribe not only chapters, but even parts of 
verses to different writers. He did not tell us that 
Proverbs was a legend; that Ecclesiastes was a philo- 
sophical enigma; that Canticles was an amorous epithala- 
mium; that Daniel, composed after the events professedly 
predicted, was a forgery rather than a prophecy; that the 
entire Old Testament was a mixture of myths, barba- 
risms, and indecencies, and unsuitable for delicate ears 
and a refined civilization. The risen Messiah on the 
whole Hebrew Canon placed the imprint of His own in- 
fallible Divinity. 

Surely He would have corrected in His countrymen 
perceived error, and also have guarded from mistake the 
future ages of His Church! Never would He have mis- 
led the world by His precept and His example. If He thus 
accepted the Hebrew Scriptures, how hazardous to ques- 
tion His accuracy, to correct His course, or doubt His 
wisdom! If He be the Messiah, we must submit to His 
Omniscience and acknowledge His Godhead. The peril 
of despising the profound rabbinical learning in regard 
to the Jewish Canon is proven to be immense. Modern 
scholars might well hesitate to disturb the traditions of 



1 66 CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

thousands of years. In our view the answers to the 
Higher Criticism are overwhelming, and the wisdom of 
the Universal Church triumphantly vindicated merely as 
a question of sound judgment and profound erudition. 
Nothing can be more obvious than that reckless depart- 
ures from the authorized canon of the Old Testament 
are attended with danger and confusion. Without ques- 
tioning the genius, the learning, or the industry of the 
leaders of the Higher Criticism, plainly their theories are 
endless and their contradictions irreconcilable, absurd 
and even ludicrous. They resemble men who, having 
left the pastures of truth, are fighting and floundering in 
some inextricable marsh. 

But it is when we see scholars arrayed against the risen 
Messiah we appreciate their desperate peril. Let them 
examine themselves! Do not their free criticisms of what 
He has approved generate skepticism? When they ascribe 
to Him error they deny His infallibility. When they 
correct His judgments they insult His Godhead. When 
they make themselves wiser than Jesus, He is no longer 
their risen, their ascended, their adored Divine King. 
As He received the Old Testament we are to receive 
it. As He used it we are to use it. As He reverenced 
it, we are to reverence it. As it was His Book of final 
appeal, it is to be our Book of final appeal. Not in Ezra, 
not in Jewish tradition, not in modern scholarship, but 
finally and forever, the authority of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures rests in the Godhead of the risen Messiah. 

IV. AND HIS SEAL ALSO MAKES AUTHORITATIVE THE 
NEW TESTAMENT THROUGH THE CHRISTIAN 
CHURCH. 

Our Saviour for years instructed His Apostolic Wit- 
nesses. They had been the companions of His ministry. 
They had heard His discourses. They had seen His 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 1 67 

miracles. Above all, they beheld Him after His Resur- 
rection. But a faith ending in the senses was insufficient. 
Christianity proposes more than knowledge. While it 
instructs, it would also renovate. Through the conscience 
it would purify the affections, and by a holy heart make 
a right life. Hence the promise to the Church of the 
Holy Ghost, which was realized in the light, the fire, the 
power, the glory, the triumph of Pentecost. But our 
Saviour had said that His Spirit should guide into all 
truth, and He had prayed for the unity of His own 
through all future time. 

As the grand basis for this unity, in nothing was the care 
of the Church more visible than in settling the canon of 
the New Testament. We have seen that the first complete 
transmitted catalogue was that of Origen, and that the 
books he includes are those now without exception re- 
ceived. For more than two centuries some fathers of 
eminence expressed doubts as to certain of the later 
epistles. Their cautious reserve shows their estimate of 
the importance of the subject, and their freedom from 
prejudice, while it also stimulated to more minute and 
extensive investigation. But after long waiting, after 
learned and patient labors, after both private examina- 
tion and public deliberation, by direct decrees, and by 
inferences innumerable, the Universal Church gave her 
consent to the books we find in our New Testament. 
They have thus all the veneration due to a catholic au- 
thority, and evince in this unity of reception the fulfil- 
ment of the promise of Jesus Christ. As our risen 
Messiah, looking through the past, placed the seal of 
His Divinity on the Old Testament, so, looking through 
the future, by His Church, He placed the seal of His 
Divinity on the New Testament. 

Having completed our argument we will venture a sug- 



168 CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

gestion. We are often saluted with sneers, and tormented 
with doubts at the spectacle of a divided Christendom. 
But we must remember the enormous obstacles in the 
way of union, and also that ages may be necessary to com- 
plete a work so vast and so embarrassed. Yet we may 
perceive amid this chaos of our humanity, as amid the 
nebulae of space, a nucleus of eternal and universal unity. 

We must not forget the subtle, the mysterious, the in- 
eradicable differences of race, and the mighty aim of 
Christianity. Ancient religions were national. Egyp- 
tians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, had their 
peculiar gods, myths and ceremonies, with no wish for 
propagation. The Mosaic Dispensation was intended 
only for the Jew. But Christianity would mould into 
unity a divided world. 

And supposing an agreement in the Canon of the Scrip- 
ture, how difficult to gather a common system from a book 
produced in a narrow and exclusive nation, composed 
by many writers during fifteen centuries, written with the 
peculiarities of the oriental style, avoiding the form of a 
treatise, hated now for Jewish intolerance and now for 
Christian catholicity, cast into the seething mass of the 
world's idolatries, humbling proud philosophies, and ex- 
posed in its interpretation to the passions and preju- 
dices of sect, age and nation in this evil earth provoked 
by its attempts at universal supremacy ! From such a 
chaos of elements can eternal truth emerge unsullied ? 
Without alloy shall the everlasting gold escape from this 
crucible ? Passing through the medium of our shattered 
humanity the pure light will experience many a deflec- 
tion which will produce discoloration. Such would seem 
the inevitable result. Only an omniscient wisdom could 
prevent what must happen under the operation of the 
laws ordinarily governing mankind. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 169 

We will find our illustration in the Council of Nicaea. 
It was summoned by Constantine chiefly to promote 
union in his vast, surging, distracted empire. The mo- 
tive convening this religious synod was low, selfish and 
political. What fierce passions it represented ! Im- 
ported from Alexandria were strifes which had stained 
that city with murder. Constantinople sent statesmen 
and ecclesiastics who were mere sycophants of the cor- 
rupt court of the Byzantine capital. East and West met 
with those rival claims of precedence which afterwards 
tore asunder Christendom, What wild, monkish fanati- 
cisms kindled the assembly into a blaze! How can the 
compromising Eusebius, the artful Arius, the heroic 
Athanasius have their antagonisms overruled in the in- 
terests of everlasting truth ? From such a volcano we 
could scarcely expect to shine over earth the pure light 
of Heaven. 

Yet from the fire and smoke of that ecclesiastical 
furnace emerged the symbol of faith which unites Chris- 
tendom i A mirror of the Scripture it reflects every 
great doctrine of our salvation. Only the promise of our 
risen Saviour realized in His Divine Presence could have 
achieved such a result. In the Nicene Creed, confirmed at 
Ephesus and expanded at Chalcedon, is made visible the 
essential doctrinal unity of the Church Catholic. Greek, 
Latin and Anglican receive it together. Romanist and 
Protestant may hush in it their strifes. With equally 
fervent lips it may be pronounced by Calvinist and 
Arminian. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congre- 
gationalists can declare it their common symbol. You 
hear it in London ) you hear it in Rome ; you hear it in 
St. Petersburg ; you hear it in Constantinople ; you hear 
it in Jerusalem ; you hear it in New York. Differing 
in all else, Christians substantially unite in the Nicene 



170 CONSEQUENCES OF THE RESURRECTION. 

Creed. It vindicates the promise of our ascended Lord, 
and if recited over the world by believers, their ming- 
ling voices, louder than the ocean and the thunder, 
would confess a common faith before the universe. 



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